LCTA Virtual Learning
Happy Tuesday!
Today's video explores high and low sounds on the xylophone and gives you a chance to move along with your body. I also play through all of the recorders that I have in my room and compare the pitch between each. I bet you didn't know that many recorders existed. Go check out the video here and move along with me! I hope that you all are doing well at home. I miss seeing your smiling faces! If you didn't check out yesterday's blog go take a look. There are a lot of music videos to go watch and listen to. Go get inspired by some music! See you tomorrow and keep being musical.
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Good morning and happy Monday!
Welcome to the last week of blogs before Spring Break. Today's video is all about sharing music with each other. Music teachers everywhere are sharing music that they enjoy and feel inspired by. They are posting it all over the place in hopes that students like you will be able to find it. Haven't found any yet? Well here is your opportunity! Click here for a YouTube channel dedicated to students and put together by music teachers in order to share music with you! This is a new space and I believe a work in progress as far as getting more videos uploaded so keep checking back for more videos. Today I am sharing one of my favorite songs with you: "True Colors" written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly and first performed by Cyndi Lauper. I fell in love with the song while watching American Idol contestant Anoop Desai perform it in 2010. I think its a good song for times such as these where things are uncertain and you just need a pick me up. Many of you probably know the song from the movie Trolls where Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake (the pink and the grey troll) perform the song near the end of the movie. You can watch today's video with me singing the song here, you can skip straight to the Troll version here, you can also watch a live version of Justin and Anna performing the song here, or you can watch all of them. In the video I talk about Justin Timberlake's roll in cartoon movies as a singer an actor. If you want to watch the scene from Horton Hears a Who where Justin Timberlake's grey character gets one solo here it is. I also wanted to take the time to share another great song with you. "We Are The World" was a song where several artists came together to record a song to raise money to help combat hunger in Africa. The music video shows several artists all together singing the song with an inspiring message. There have been a lot of collaboration videos going around today through virtual recording and editing videos together, so I thought it would be a good time to share this video. Click here to watch "We Are The World." Do you recognize any of the artists? In today's video I mentioned that Mr. Forbes from James K. Polk had made another video about making instruments at home. You can find his video here. Go check it out! Make some music at home. Here are some other videos for you to go check out and get music in your day: Baby Shark has put out a video on how to wash your hands, sneeze, and cough: click here. Also, do you remember those YouTube videos that we would play boomwhackers to during music? Well you can now play along at home with some homemade sounds. Here is a home edition musication video to play along with. What do you like to listen to at home? Share something in the comments below! Happy Friday! I am wearing my school spirit today for LCTA's spirit week. I hope that you are too! I loved seeing some of your rhyming responses yesterday. Thank you for sharing your ideas! I was so excited to see that some of you had taken the time to share a response with me. Today's video is a movement video. In today's video I keep the beat with my body as well as some new stuffed animal friends. The song you will be listening to is called Concerto Grosso in C Major, Op. 6, No. 10: II. Allemanda: Allegro by Arcangelo Corelli. Corelli was a Baroque composer and well known for his strings pieces which you can hear in the example we are about to move together with. The piece is fast paced as noted by the Allegro (fast) portion of the title. If you would like to simply listen to the song and keep the beat on your own you can click here. I challenge you to do better than I did in the video and get up out of your chair. My camera would not give me a tall enough view in order for you to see my whole body, so I am sitting down the entire time. I know you can find ways of moving around the room or even simply doing a nonlocomotor motion in place. Remember, nonlocomotor means doing something with your body in place such as jumping, marching in place, or any motion with just your arms. YouTube took issue with my use of the Naxos recording of the song, so I am unable to share the video with you through YouTube. Today, though, I decided to try out WeVideo, so I can share it with you through WeVideo if you click here. The opening music I got from Bensound.com. Thank you Bensound.com for giving me some nice opening music to my video! Alright, get up and get moving! I also wanted to share a fun video that I found this morning. I watched Frozen 2 when it was released on Disney Plus and if you did too, or you saw it in theaters, then you might like this a cappella version of the song Show Yourself. A Cappella songs are some of my favorite covers. They take pieces of music and create covers of them without any instruments, only vocal sounds. So click here to check that out if you are interested. I hope you have a great weekend. See you Monday! Happy Thursday, which is really just Friday-Eve,
Today is dress for success day! I put on a dress I would typically wear to work today and even added some earrings. It is difficult to convince myself to put on work clothes when I know I will not be leaving my house. As you will notice in today's video I am not wearing my glasses. This is another thing that I am wearing on some days and not on others. Depends on my mood and how much reading I will be doing during the day. Lola comes out to visit today in the first video. With only singing, she is happy to meander around the room. The minute she sees the ukulele, though, she is gone. So today, you get proof that I do own a cat, besides just their food bowls and plates in the background of my videos. I'm so glad that you are back to read another blog and watch another video. I hope that you enjoyed "The Dot Song" yesterday with Emily. Today I have two videos with some echoing in it! Echoing is an important activity that we do in music class on a daily basis. In several of our music classes we start out with some warm up solfege echoing. I will apologize ahead of time if in the video I go a too fast. There are not other people to gauge the correct speed and wait time so I have to use myself echoing in my head which sometimes is faster than it should be. Feel free to pause the video and echo back if you feel frustrated with the quick pace. My first video that I have for you has some solfege echos. We will only be using Mi, Sol, and La today since that is accessible with everyone from Kindergarten to 5th grade. You can also sing Down By The Bay with me at the end. This is one of my favorite echo songs and if I was your music teacher in Kindergarten then you should know it! Click here to join me in some simple echo singing. My second video is geared more towards my older students, but you are welcome to give it a try if you would like a challenge. This video contains some more echoing but this time with body percussion. The patterns I use range from using two different levels of body percussion to three levels. Some are harder than others. Go check it out here! I hope to see you tomorrow! Keep singing! Happy Hump Day!
It's time for one of my favorite songs and one of Mrs. St. Louis' favorite books. She likes to read it at the beginning fo the year and I like to sing the song as a refresher at the end of the year (this year I couldn't wait, so I introduced it to Kindergarten a few weeks before we became virtual). Do not let that fool you though, this song can be sung by all grade levels. Mrs. Knoll discovered the song and shared it with me last year and I knew I had to share it! The song is based off of the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. You can go read the book here. In my opinion, the take away is that you should not say you can't before you try. What a great lesson! The beginning of the book starts with the teacher calling Vashti's empty paper a "polar bear in a snow storm." The beginning of the song starts with this exact phrase. The song is a summary of the book with a catchy chorus! I hope that you enjoy it. Emily Arrow wrote "The Dot Song" in collaboration with Peter H. Reynolds. How cool is that? She has motions to do with the song and you can watch her sing and perform them here. Her YouTube channel also has songs to go with other books if you are interested in checking it out. I hope that you enjoy singing and moving with her! Until next time, keep singing! Good morning LCTA!
Today is healthy choices day for our spirit week. In today's video I took the good portion of the first half to explain how I am making healthy choices in my life by exercising daily, eating my fruits and vegetables, and making myself a schedule. I think this comes at a good time as some of us are very disappointed that we will not be going back to school this year. It sounds like it was the safest choice to make, but still leaves a lot of hard feelings to deal with. During times like these where I have feelings that I am working through, I find music is a good stress reliever. Playing an instrument or singing can make me feel better on any given day. Last night I found my mind wandering in all different kinds of directions. To get rid of some of those thoughts and calm my mind, I wrote a song, played the ukulele, and sang for a bit. What came out of it is a song dedicated to you all and how I hope that I will get to see more of you virtually soon. That is the video that I have decided to share with you today. If you would like to watch it, you can click here. I will be attempting to stick to a schedule from now on with office hours from 1-2. If you would like to email me with any questions about available music resources or videos of you playing an instrument or singing, I would love to hear from you. Tomorrow I will be posting a blog about The Dot and sharing a video of the song that we have learned in class during Kindergarten extra music. If you are in 1st grade and were here last year you will recognize it. If you do not know the song or the book you should check it out. It is a great, catchy song for every grade level to participate in. Thanks for reading and I will see you all tomorrow! Happy Monday LCTA!
I hope you are reading this in your pajamas since today is pajama day for spirit week! Today's video is the song Puff the Magic Dragon. Click here to watch the video. Unfortunately, the ukulele comes out a little bit louder today, so I am sorry if it is hard to hear the vocals. Once again, at the end of the video you get a chance to sing along for your families, pets, plants, etc. I do not have the book to share with you all, but I did include two pictures that I found from the end of the book to remind us that, even though the song sounds sad, the book ends on a happy note. Puff the Magic Dragon is a favorite childhood song of mine. My dad used to sing it to me while playing his guitar when I was an elementary school student. The song is written and performed by the folk singing group Peter, Paul, and Mary. The group is made up of three members: Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. Peter and Paul were the members of the group that would write the music. They also performed folk songs together. Another song that I think of when I hear their names is If I Had a Hammer, which you can listen to them singing here. Moving back to Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Yarrow wrote the song based on a poem written by Leonard Lipton in 1959. The song can now also be found as a children's book, which we have read in class, as well as a 30-minute movie that I watched when I was in school. All of this information can be found on the Puff, the Magic Dragon Wikipedia page as well as in the description of the If I Had a Hammer YouTube video. Also, as promised, I have created a video of the second version of The Irish Blessing being sung in a round. Remember, a round is when two or more groups do the same thing but they start at different times. I hope that you will take a listen to what a round sounds like and sing a long! Click here for the video. I would also like to share with you a video of Mr. Forbes from James K. Polk Elementary School offering a way to make a musical instrument at home. Go to my twitter page to see how to use glasses and water to make your very own musical instrument. 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students, this would be a great way to make your own music and upload a video of you performing to our SeeSaw class. Keep singing and I will see you tomorrow! Greetings musicians!
Our last good bye song that we typically use to close class is Aloha Oe. The title of this song means "farewell to thee" and was written by Queen Lili'uokalani around 1878. At the time she was the princess of the Hawaiian kingdom. If you would like to know a little bit more about the song you can read the Wikipedia article linked here. This song is near and dear to my heart for two reasons. I have a small percentage of Hawaiian in my cultural background and it is sung in Lilo and Stitch which is one of my favorite Disney movies. The lyrics are: Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe E ke onaona noho i ka lipo One fond embrace A hoʻi aʻe au Until we meet again Translated the words are: Farewell to thee, farewell to thee The charming one who dwells in the shaded bowers One fond embrace 'Ere I depart Until we meet again You can click here to watch the video of me singing and giving you a chance to sing along. You can also click here to watch the clip from Lilo and Stitch where Nani sings the song to Lilo. The song begins at 0:45 if you would like to skip the beginning of the scene. As we end the week of our first full week away from school and each other, I would like to share a few more things with you. As music teachers are beginning to work from home, they have also begun to collaborate with each other and post music online. As I see other posts from teachers, I may choose to share some of these with you. One post that I thought you may enjoy is a class singing Lil' Liza Jane together using echo singing. If you would like to learn a new song and sing along you can find that video here. Don't forget that on Monday I will be posting the second version of the Irish Blessing in a round, so, if you want to join in with me, go back to the second blog and take a listen. Happy Friday and can't wait to see you again Monday! Good afternoon!
Welcome to my second blog and video! In today's video we are singing the Irish Blessing. I have 2 versions for you to listen to today. The first is our good bye song that we sing during class with the sign language. I have also given you another chance to sing along and perform for your families with this song. The second version is a round. For review, a round is when two or more groups do the same thing but start at different times. I will post the song begin sung in a round on Monday, so, if you would like, you can learn the song by listening to the video and join me in the round on Monday. Below are the lyrics for both versions. The second version has some slightly different wording in the last few lines of the lyrics. Click here to watch the video Version 1: May the road rise to meet you May the wind be always at your back May the sun shine warm upon your face And the rain fall soft upon your fields And until we meet again Until we meet again May god hold you in the palm of his hand Until we meet again Version 2: May the road rise to meet you May the wind be always at your back May the sun shine warm upon your face May the rain fall soft upon your fields And until we meet again May you rest in the palm of god's hand Comment below what you hear in the differences between the use of the words and how the melody is different. Happy singing! Greetings LCTA students!
I have set up a blog to post content for you all to view and interact with. I hope to post at least one blog per typical school day with either a video or a SeeSaw activity included. I might include some lyrics for you to use and sing along with me. I may give you some worksheets to look at and complete if you feel compelled. As we continue on this journey, I hope to evolve the way that I use this platform and work with you, but for now the easiest way for me to share music with you is by singing. Today I have the ROARS song for you to sing at home with your family, pets, plants... whoever is around. I hope that you enjoy singing along! If you forgot the lyrics or need a review, I have included them below. Click on the link here to watch the video Show me your ROARS, your ROARS, I wanna see your ROARS, your ROARS, Show me respect, own up to your acts, Show me a good kind attitude Be responsible and safe That's what you've gotta do To show me your ROARS, your ROARS I wanna see your ROARS, your ROARS Show me your ROARS Until next time, keep singing! |
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