school closure plan

Grade 1 - week 1

Students are learning to keep a steady beat. They learned a game song “Acka Backa” with passing on a clap.

Parents, ask them to sing it to you with patting the beat with one hand. (just to see if they keep the beat).


Let’s learn a new song “Little Sally Walker”.

★ Little Sally Walker Lyrics:

Little Sally Walker

sitting in a saucer,

Crying and weeping and

looking for a friend

Rise, Sally, rise!

Wipe your weeping eyes!

Turn to the east.

Turn to the west.

Turn to the one that you like best.


You can listen to the song HERE. Learn how to sing it first.

The students were introduced to the singing hand - showing the pitch with your hands while singing. Here is a video of “Little Sally Walker” with the singing hand. Students should follow (copy) the movements.

Parents can send me a video from the student singing the song Little Sally Walker with "the singing hand" by Thursday 19th. Please upload the video in this folder.


This song has different versions that go with a game. If you want to play it with your family, here is a video (game starts at 1:20) . The lyrics in the video are slightly different. Here they are. You can play the game with either lyrics.

2nd version of lyrics

Little Sally Walker

sitting in a saucer,

Rise, Sally, rise!

Wipe your weeping eyes!

Put your hands on your hip

and let your backbone slip

Shake it to the east

Shake it to the west

Shake it to the one that you love the best.


Week 2

The students should know how to pat the beat with one hand. They can also walk and make steps to show the beat. We were learning to recognize if there is one or two sounds on a beat. The next assignment is for them to figure out the rhythm of the song “Little Sally Walker” beat by beat.

Here is an empty worksheet (page 1, page 2) where the students can draw the circles to represent the sounds. Each line represents one beat. On each line there should be one, two or no sounds (a rest) represented with one or two circles, or an X for a rest.

Sing the first two beats and ask how many sounds are on the first beat, how many on the second beat. Draw a big circle for one sound, and two smaller circles for two sounds on a beat. Then the next two beats. Till the end of the first part.

Please don’t do the whole song at once, the first half one day, the second half another day. (second part is longer).

Here is a solved worksheet (both pages) for the parents to see what needs to be done. I wrote the words here as well to help the parents understand, the students don’t need to write them, just circles for sound and Xs for the rests


week 3 - 30.03 - 03.04

The Quarter Note



There are a lot of different types of notes, with different shapes. If they look different, they should sound different, too.



Today I want to introduce you to the note called Quarter note.



It is made of a head (the oval/lemon shape

part) and neck (the line).

Take a blank paper and try to draw quarter notes.

It’s very important that the line is only touching the right side of the oval, not longer like the letter d :) and the head should be more like a lemon not a round circle.


-wrong kind of quarter notes

To draw it right, make a semicircle up and semicircle down, then color the inside and give it a neck.

I would love to see a photo of the students quarter notes in this folder or on my email aneta.ilieva@nova.edu.mk

Here is a little fun activity. Print it if you can, or open it in PAINT, find all the squares with a quarter note and color them with the same color to reveal a hidden picture.

week 4 - 06.04 - 10.04

In the previous lesson we learned a symbol called a quarter note. Today we are learning another type of notes called eighth notes. This is what a pair of eighth notes look like. They look like two quarter notes connected with a line. So, a pair of eighth notes is made of two heads, two necks and a connecting line


When you draw eighth notes, it’s very important to always put the neck on the right side of the heads. The eighth notes should not look like these examples

Now that you have learned the quarter and eighth notes, what do you think, which notes should take the place of the one big circle on a line from “Little Sally Walker”, and which for the 2 small circles on a line.

Here is another worksheet where instead of circles you need to write the notes. First page and second page. (Upload a picture of the solved worksheets with the notes HERE.

And this is a big WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF MUSIC NOTES.

21.04- 25.04

This week we will join “People of the past” - the IPC unit.

Listen to this piece of music (the first 3 minutes) and draw something (doesn’t need to look great).

What does the music make you feel? What do you think it is about?

A composer is a writer of music. Instead of working with words, they work with musical notes. The music that the children heard was created by a very famous composer. His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was a very amazing composer because he was playing instruments and composing music by the age of five! During his lifetime he wrote over six hundred compositions. Many of his symphonies and operas are still loved and listened to by people today. The music piece you listened to is called - Requiem. It was the last music he ever composed. It was written to be played at a funeral. Mozart became very ill while writing it and passed away before finishing it. Listen to the music one more time and talk about how it makes you feel.

Here is another piece of music composed by Mozart. Listen to the first 3 minutes and draw something (doesn’t need to look great). This is one of his symphonies. A symphony is a big piece of music for an orchestra with a lot of different instruments. What does the music make you feel? What do you think it is about?

How is this piece different from the first one? Mozart used music to communicate different feelings.

The goal of this lesson, besides learning about Mozart, is listening and analyzing how a music piece can make you feel, how it can tell a story, or present an emotion/feeling without words.

You can upload a photo of the drawings in this folder

29.04.2020

This week’s music task will be about connecting our ears with our brain - understanding what we are listening to. To warm up, please echo sing these melodies. Play the recording and sing one more time.

Melodies usually have a movement. Sometimes they go up, sometimes down.

Here is a melody going up. It feels like you are going up the stairs.

You can show it with a drawing like this.

Here is a melody going down. It feels like you're going down the stairs. You can show it with a drawing like this.

If the melody goes up and down it will look like this.

Listen to the melodies going up and down a couple of times.

Take a paper and like a quiz, draw these 5 melodies, draw steps up or down for each melody. (If you can upload the drawing in this folder it would be great)

Here is a longer melody going up and down, this one is with the names of the notes. They go like this: DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI, DO (and down) DO, TI, LA, SO, FA, MI, RE, DO.

Try to sing along if you can.

04.05.2020 - Long and short sounds

Today I have a new song for you. First I need the students to listen to THE SONG, listen to the words. What is the song about? Listen to it one more time and try to pat the beat for the whole song. Be careful not to change how fast you pat with your hand, have a steady patting for the whole song. What do you think, does it sound like one pat of the song is slower than the other? Which part sounds faster, which one slower?

Learn to sing the song - find the lyrics HERE.

When you sing the song some of the words are much longer than others. Find out the 4 words that are LONG (hot,lost,rest, home). Take a paper, divide it into 4 parts and draw something for the last 4 lines, one in each box (1.the sun is hot, 2.the cows are lost, 3.I think I’ll rest, 4.’till they come home). You can upload a picture in this folder


12.05 Parts of the song

This week’s music assignment is again with listening to music. This time I want you to use your imagination. The song that you need to listen to is part of a group of songs called “The Comedians” by a Russian composer called Dmitri Kabalevsky.

The gallop by Dmitri Kabalevsky

Listen to the song. What do you imagine that the comedians or clowns are doing?

I don’t like to talk during music, but I have to so I can explain the parts. Watch this video presentation to understand the parts of this song.

The song is made of 3 parts, like a pattern, the first and the last part are the same. If we mark them with letters it would be A - B - A. The middle part is softer and more smooth.

Divide a paper in 2 and make a drawing with 2 different parts of something that the music inspires you (it doesn’t have to be clowns). The song is short so you need to repeat it a couple of times :) You can upload the drawings in this folder.

20.05.2020 Part of a song

This week the task is only to watch the video and listen carefully to the music. Again the goal is to recognize the pattern of the parts of the song. The March (starts 2:32 in this video) from the group of songs called Comedians by Kabalevsky has 3 parts. Here is a VIDEO where I explain the parts of the song. As I say in the video, the first part of the song (marching and bowing) is repeated, the second part is marching on a little bit higher and a little bit lower melody, and the third part is a copy of the first part (once).

Watch the video a couple of times and then try to just listen to the music and say the parts when they change. (No need to share their work for this assignment)

You can listen to the whole suite The Comedians if you want, it’s fun :)

27.05.2020 Treble clef part 1

Just like we use letters to write words, and numbers to write math, to write music we use MUSIC NOTES. We already learned some types of notes (quarter and eighth notes). The 5 lines that we write notes on are called a MUSIC STAFF.

The next thing to learn is a very important symbol for music called a TREBLE CLEF.

We cannot write music if there is not this kind of a symbol on the beginning of the music staff. In order to learn how to draw this symbol we will start with the first move. On a piece of paper draw 3 straight lines like this.

Start from the middle line and draw a snail. Make sure that you just touch the highest line and bottom line like this. Don’t go higher or lower than these lines. Please draw 6 of these "snails".

We are going to stop with the treble clef here and continue the next part next week. Please upload a photo of the drawing in this folder.

Now let’s listen to some music and enjoy. You all know the group of songs called “The Carnival of the Animals” by Saint-Saens. Please listen to THE SWAN from this group, close your eyes and try to imagine a calm peaceful lake and a beautiful swan slowly swimming on the surface with all it’s grace.

2.06.2020 Finish the treble clef

Let’s try to finish those treble clefs. We started with the first part, the snail in only 3 lines. Now draw 5 lines, and draw the snail in the bottom 3 lines. Like this:

Don't go over the bottom line, and above the third line. Once this is done, the next move is a long line up to the right side, then a semi-circle to the left, and then straight down through the middle and give it a tale to the left.

Try to draw more treble clefs on a music staff (on 5 lines), but don’t worry if they don’t look great. We will practice them a lot more next year. If you want to share your treble clefs with me, upload a picture in this folder.

As a bonus assignment for eager students, one extra task. Make your own song about how you felt staying home - the good and not that good parts :) Doesn’t matter how long or short it is. If you make a song I would love to hear it. Please send it to me on email or upload it HERE.