First Grade

First grade continues to enforce many of the simple concepts from Kindergarten.  More difficult ideas, songs, games, and concepts are introduced as students become more skilled in music and develop as elementary students.  More specific activities and concepts are listed below:

• Learn and demonstrate classroom rules and procedures through  music

• Sing songs, play games, and participate in activities that challenge developing coordination (e.g., "My Aunt Came Back," Follow the Leader activities, etc.)

• Play simple percussion instruments for keeping steady beats, creating story timbres, and call-and-response activities

• Sing and identify solfege syllables DO, RE, MI, FA, SO(L), and LA

• Write, read, and identify simple rhythms including quarter notes (ta), quarter rests (silent), eighth notes (ti-tis) and half notes (ta-ah) in music

• Sing and identify high and low sounds and voices

• Create motions to a song using key words and phrases from songs (e.g., "Little Red Wagon," etc.)

• Identify instrument families and their members using listening skills and specific attributes of the instruments

• Identify various timbres of voices and instruments

• Use proper vowel shapes in songs using hard and soft vowel sounds

• Sing in foreign languages using simple children's songs (e.g., "Un, Deux, Trois")

• Sing songs for various holidays, seasons, and events (e.g., "Magic Spell," "The Witch's Cat," The Turkey Game, "Hanukkah Fun," etc.)

• Identify and define a phrase within a piece of music

• Play and define an ostinato

• Use and define various forms in music (e.g., verse-chorus form, rondo, various patterns of A and B sections)

• Define the word tempo, and play games and sing songs using different tempos

• Use and develop inner speech while singing

• Learn about and sing spirituals

• Experience and create/invent new instruments (real and fake) (e.g., Marble Machine)

• Sing songs with expression