Today students learned about BEAT and Rhythm.  Beat is the constant pulse of the music.  It's the feeling that makes you want to tap your toe or bop your head.  Beat has the ability to change tempo.  Rhythm is the arrangement of the notes.  By dividing beats and combining beats you can create all kinds of rhythm.  Using the syllables of words you can create rhythms.  We clapped, snapped, tapped and even danced to music in the classroom today.  Pick your favorite song and tap, clap, or snap to the beat of the music.  Then have some fun and dance to another fun song.

Today we reviewed beat and rhythm and introduced three notes- Whole, Half, & Quarter.  A quarter is usually 1 beat.  A half note is usually 2 beats and equal to 2 quarter notes, and a whole note is 4 beats and equal to 4 quarter notes or 2 half notes.  We learned that these notes are ratios.  When a quarter note equals 2, then a half note equals 4 and a whole equals 8.  A quarter note doesn't always get 1 beat so it is important to understand the relationship between these three notes.  Here is a good video to watch that explains more about these 3 notes.  After we learned the notes we played some music and clapped, snapped or tapped quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes using the beat of the song as our guide.

In addition to learning notes I taught the students the three positions in choir.  Each position is represented by 1 finger, 2 fingers, or 3 fingers.  When I hold 1 finger up students are to stand up nice and tall with correct singing posture.  Two fingers is sitting down on the edge or their seat with good singing posture, and 3 fingers means the student can relax because we will not be singing for a minute or more.  After I taught them the hand signals we practiced following them.  

In class I had students pick a partner and gave assigned seats.  Afterward we assigned folder numbers to each partnership.  It took most of class.  Tomorrow we look forward to singing and learning some fun music.

We reviewed rhythm, beat, and the 3 notes-- Quarter, Half, & Whole.  Rhythm is only part of the music.  It's partner is pitch.  Musicians have created symbols to define where the pitch of a specific note is.  The main music symbol is called a staff.  The staff made up of 4spaces and 5 lines, however we know that there are more than 9 pitches that can be played on a piano or other instruments.  Musicians use ledger lines to extend the pitches above and below the staff.  Each ledger line represents another line of staff and the space between those lines represent the spaces of the staff.  As pitches get higher up the staff they also get higher in pitch, the same goes for pitches getting lower.

After learning about the staff we started learning the song "Howdeedow Diddlumday"  The first step to learning the song is learning the rhythm and how to say the words in the correct rhythm.  Today we learned the rhythm and listened to the song.  After learning the rhythm we played the "Rhythm name game"