Weeks 5 & 6: 9/12-9/23

On Wednesday, 9/21 we had our 2^nd Annual Peace Day Ceremony in front of the school. All elementary students, as well as many secondary students and staff, planted Pinwheels for Peace on the front lawn. The ceremony began with a few moments of reflection on the meaning of peace, and culminated in a rousing rendition of Peace Like a River. Elementary students will bring home their pinwheels next week.

Pre-school and Kindergarten students are continuing to explore their singing voices and build a repertoire of simple songs that contain short melodic ranges, develop basic coordination and early rhythmic skills by playing of hand drums, exploring legato and staccato with scarves, and moving expressively during Freeze Dance.

ELC students are continuing to explore their singing voices and build musical skills through musical games like Sarasponda. We are continuing to work with early rhythmic development by working with Pre-O Passo, a series of pre-cursory activities based on walking alone and together with others to build beat-fluency and the ability to clap on either the strong foot or week foot. Mary and Jana’s classes will soon start to work with O Passo by combining their walking with a conducting beat model (see: https://www.institutodopasso-en.org/).

IA students are continuing to explore their head voices and build basic 2-part singing skills. We are starting to work more deeply with rhythmic concepts like beat, meter, and measure through work with O Passo (see descriptions from previous weeks) and Brazilian percussion instruments. We are also working to create arrangements of simple songs on pitched percussion instruments.

Bridges students were gone the week of 9/12 on their camping trip. When they returned, we assembled pinwheels in class and began working with pitched percussion instruments, starting to figure out how to play several pop-tune melodies and accompaniments in the Key of C.