Dear Parents,
We began our week painting our guitars. We painted the inside and the outside of our boxes. While they dried we rode tricycles, built another ice-cream truck, kicked balls, ran, climbed in the jungle gym, tumbled, and cooked pretend food.
During circle we played our drums and kazoos. We attempted to play our instruments to the beat of some poems and rhyming books. It sorta worked, but one person said they couldn’t hear the words, so we read the last couple of pages with no music. We read Chicken Soup With Rice while playing instruments. We read Eat Your Peas, Louise! And Each Peach Pear Plum without playing our instruments.
We added rubber bands to our guitars for strings, and practiced strumming and plucking. We listened to a CD of guitar music that included Bach and Jimmy Hendrix.
We read Hearing (many times) and looked at the picture of the inner, middle, and outer ear. We talked about sound waves and vibrations. We examined the vibration of our rubber bands on our guitars as we plucked them. Someone said, "It looks like two." To further illustrate vibrations, we took turns dropping a quarter and a bolt into a tray of water. We watched the tiny waves go back and forth in the water. Someone said, "You can hear the vibrations of the waves at the beach."
Also this week we read Ben’s Trumpet, The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, I Know A Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello, and My Little Sister Ate One Hare. We listened to Miles Davis, and 70’s disco. When we read Ben’s Trumpet the children noticed that the picture of the sound waves looked like the letters Z, N, W, and M. We said the name of the club in the book, “Zig Zag Jazz Club” and noticed all the Z’s.
We cut paper plates in half and counted how many tambourines each cut would make: two, four, six, eight… The children decorated their tambourines with crayons, markers, and paints. They helped punch holes to add bells. We used pipe cleaners to attach the bells onto the plates. Fine motor skills galore.
Since we’ve been making instruments, the children have told us that their parents play piano, trumpet, guitar, drums, and violin. If anyone would like to come in and play their instrument for a family share, we would absolutely love it. Do we have any singers?
Next week: papier mache maracas!
Have a musical weekend,
Therese