Music Around the World--A Christmas Edition--Week 1--Australia

Welcome to our Music Around the World Club--A Christmas Edition! I am so very excited that your child is joining me in this journey as we travel around the world exploring different countries and their unique music. I have two loves in life—music and children— so I could not be more thrilled to share this experience together with your child. We are going to learn to play instruments and sing songs from different countries. Then, we will share our music with you all on Thursday night, December 7th at 7:00 P.M. Please save this date on your calendar! It is sure to be a night that you will not want to miss! Thank you again for allowing me the privilege to work with your child. I can not wait to share this experience together!

We began our musical tour around the world today by talking about the universal language of music and how it can touch all hearts and help all people. Then, we enjoyed singing "Let It Be Christmas Everywhere" together before flying around the world to Australia. 

The land down under had a lot to offer us! We learned about everything from koala bears to kangaroos and explored the top ten places to visit in Australia on a kids travel website. We were also introduced to two of Australia's favorite instruments--bilemas and digeridoos. After listening to one of Australia's traditional songs featuring these instruments, we made our very own bilemas and digeridoos. Boy were they cool too! Finally, we began learning the Australian Christmas song that we are going to perform, Roo Roo the Kangaroo. It is a silly song that will make you giggle and laugh, while allowing you to soak up the unique sounds of the digeridoos and the bilmas. Here is a show of our first day together. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about our first week in Music Around the World!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8bHBTR0tLTE4tSFk/view?usp=sharing

These two special friends of mine made my day by wearing our Find Your Light t-shirts from our Music Around the World club musical from last year! :)

Support our Find Your Light Service Project by purchasing cookies for a quarter! Help us change the world for the better through the art of music! 

Grandparents' Day

In honor of Grandparents' Day, we created some special hand made art projects to share with our families. We made a special decoupage jar of hugs and kisses, a super cute poem with handprint art, and a tissue paper apple.  We also presented a sweet Grandparents' Day Musical Moment for our visitors where we sang some very special songs to our precious grandparents. Our slide show below includes the music that we sang to them today and pictures from our event. We are so very thankful to all of our grandparents who attended! We hope you had a wonderful time! If you were unable to attend, check out our pictures and videos from today. We missed you, and hope that you enjoy our show! Leave us a comment and let us know what you thought of our fun day together!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8ZE5Zd0kzYXRrajA/view?usp=sharing

Third Week Highlights

We have been studying about our community helpers. First, we began our project based learning unit with an engaging entry event where we used our classroom puppets to act out going to work, earning money, and using our money to buy something that we need. Then, we had an opportunity to meet some of our community helpers and learn about their jobs. Check out our pictures of our special guests below! Our students also created a Keynote presentation which shows them dressed up as the community helper that they hope to be in the future. 

Hi Ho! Song and Entry Event

Purchasing our needs with our earned money

Flow Maps of Your Job--Earning Money---and Spending Money on your Needs

Meeting our Community Helpers:

Our Principal--Mr. Grey

Our Firefighter Friends

Our fire fighter friend in his uniform

Exploring his fire gear

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5toJX-y1TGoWjFXLTl6TDJ0TVE/view?usp=sharing

Learning about Stop, Drop, and Roll

Exploring the fire truck

Our Police Officer Friends

We made police belts so that we could be police officers too!

When we grow up we want to be...

We have also been working hard this week on our numbers 1-5. We have learned a fun song for each number and have been singing away as we learn to recognize, write, and count using these numbers. We even made our numbers out of playdough. Check out our pictures below!