Week 2

During the second week there were several new things that I learned. We went over steady beat, which is the constant repetition of one sound, and rhythm, which is the combination of short, long, and silent sounds. These two things are concepts that are extremely important in music. One of the skills that we worked on was playing the recorder. We learned three different notes, A, G, and B, and learned how to play our first song, hot cross buns. Although I think I'm just about the only one, I'd never learned how to play the recorder in elementary school so it's was new to me, but fun. We also learned a few new songs that we could use in our future classrooms.

Steady beat and rhythm were imparted to us through an activity we did with making up a rhyme. Everyone in the class made up a rhyme that had four beats and was four lines and then using a hand drum or rhythmic sticks we had a partner keep the beat as we recited our poem. After everyone understood the concept of steady beat we worked on rhythm using the same some and the hand drum again. It helped us understand and hear the difference between the two. To understand how to play the recorder the teacher demonstrated a note for us, showed us the proper way to hold the instrument, and then followed and tried to play ourselves.

I think it is important that we learned these things because steady beat and rhythm are such important concepts in music that in order to really understand music we first have to learn the basics. To really progress and move onto things like the recorder or singing it helps to know the different concepts. The recorder seems to be a good way to introduce children to music and instruments, so in order to teach the children in our class these skills we must know them first. I also believe it's important because it is another way to make sure we enrich our class with subject matter outside of the norm and really get children interested. It gives them the opportunity to expand their creativity as well.

The younger that children begin to learn music the better it is. I have found that children often understand things better when it is presented to them through music. For example, the reason why many of knew our alphabet at such a young age was because of the catchy song that came along with it. I'm not sure how true it is, but I've also heard that things like learning instruments or new languages are easiest when people are young because they're still picking up on so many things, and as we get older it becomes harder. Because of this I think that introducing students to the recorder or other instruments gives them a head start and is a very good idea. 10 songs that I am familiar with would be...
1.) twinkle twinkle little star
2.) Mary had a little lamb
3.) ABC song
4.) Happy Birthday
4.) Jingle Bells
5.)Three Blind Mice
6.)Itsy Bitsy Spider
7.)Baa Baa Black Sheep
8.)Old Mac Donald
9.)Bingo
10.)If you're happy and you know it