Music with Mrs. Muench

This year in  music we got to do some exciting stuff.  Mrs. Muench let us play games on the computer when she had to call small groups of kids up to take a singing test.  One of the games we got to play was “Kerpoof!”.  Sometimes when we finished our work early we got to play games too.  We could even listen to music on the computer. We got to see a really cool Christmas light display that had music to go with it. 

We also got to watch a movie called Stomp Out Loud!  In the movie people made music using garbage not real instruments.  They played cards and made music doing that.  Sometimes they would tap the cards on the table and that made a beat.  In that part there were also a few people who made crunch noises by chomping on an apple.   They also used basketballs to make music.  The performers used brooms to swish and tap the floor to make song too.  There were even trashcans that sounded like drums!  And in the cooking one there was a man who yelled.  They even used buckets to make music and we never thought of doing that!  In one part they were banging on a truck to make sounds. 

Music was lots of fun this year!  We can’t wait to see what we get to do in 2^nd grade music class!

This year we have done many exciting things.  One of the most exciting ones was square dancing.  Square dancing was fun because you get to dance with your friends. If your parents came to the concert they got to watch you dance.  We danced to 3 songs.  Mrs. Muench let us choose one of our songs to square dance to. We choose the song Bob That Head by Rascal Flatts.   We voted on the Internet.  Mrs. Muench put a survey on her webpage that we got to use to vote.  After we voted we planned the dance steps to the song.  The other 2 songs were Captain Jinks and Shoo Fly.  After the dancing test Mrs. Muench selected which classes got to dance each song.

Mrs. Muench put a game called Scribble States on her website.   We played the game because it helped us study our states.  It was fun because you got to draw the state as a dot-to-dot and then you had to name the state.  And at the end of the game you got a grade telling you how well you did.  This game could be helpful in 4^th grade because we need to know the capitals.  We liked Scribble States because it was a fun way to study our states.

Another one of our favorite activities was playing Statue.  You have to dance and when the music stops you have to freeze.  If you move you are out.  Mrs. Muench decides who is moving.  We get to play statue when our behavior chart is full of stamps. You get to listen to cool music.  You get to use almost any dance moves you want.  Mrs. Muench doesn’t like break dancing (like spinning on the floor) because someone might get hurt in her classroom full of computers.  It feels exciting when you get to dance.  If you’re not dancing you are out because that’s cheating.  You get to dance with all your friends and that’s really fun!  If you touch other people you will be out.  Sometimes we make trains to dance.  But trains are tricky because if one person in the train moves then usually everyone moves and then we all get out.

The Middle School Band came and played 3 very interesting songs.  We got to eat cookies while we listened.  We really liked the last one, The Incredibles Theme Song!  We liked that one because it had action music.  We also liked the song from the Civil War because it had a big drum in it called a Bass Drum. They showed their instruments to us. 

We won an award this year.  The award was for the Collaborative Composer Project.  We got to talk to 5^th graders in Chicago using the webcam and Skype.  We made a VoiceThread with a bunch of facts about the opera The Magic Flute.  One of the facts was false.  Then the 5^th graders had to guess which fact was false.  They didn’t figure it out though.  Our false fact was “Pamina married Papageno.” because she really married Tamino.  We got to make avatars for the VoiceThread. We did not just put a picture of us on the Internet because that wouldn’t be safe.

We played computer games in music class.  We like playing computer games because it is fun and entertaining.  We like it because they are the most fun games ever.  The best game is Find the Instruments.  You have to look in bushes and animal’s mouths.  We liked playing games on Mrs. Muench’s webpage.

We also performed a musical at the Christmas program.  There is a girl named Maya that did a beautiful solo.  Our class sang, What We Need Is a Miracle,  There was a play and the characters were elves and reindeer and the Clauses.  The songs we sang were  Happy Christmas Eve, Foggy Foggy Night, What We Need Is a Miracle and Super Celelbration.  We had a great time being on stage that night.

We did some exciting activities in music class this year. 

Mrs. Muench made flower pens.  They are pens with a flower on top because they are pretty and it keeps all her favorite pens on her desk.

We played a game on Mrs. Muench’s website to help us learn about instruments in music.  We listened to a book called The Remarkable Farkle Mc Bride. Farkle started out liking the instruments but as he got older he started to not like the instrument he played and he had to throw them away.  We liked the book because we learned about the instruments and it was funny.  It was also a rhyming book.

 We had to ask the different instruments about themselves and then we made a recording of the interview. We learned that some instruments are made of brass and wood and metal and strings.  Those families are called the Brass, String, Percussion, and Woodwind families.  We heard how the instruments sounded on the internet. We found out how big they are.  We also watched a movie called Peter and the Wolf.  We liked the movie because each character had a special instrument.  It was a funny movie too.  There was a cat in the movie and the clarinet played for it.  The instrument for the wolf was 3 French Horns.  The oboe played for the duck.  The flute played for the bird.  The most exciting part was when Peter caught the wolf. Peter lowered a rope and caught the wolf by the tail and then he pulled him up on the branch.  It was funny when the hunters walked all together with the big guns but the hunters were very small people. The grandfather looked like Santa Claus and he didn’t want Peter to be in the meadow.  It was sad when the wolf ate the duck.  At the end they made a marching band to celebrate.

We put on a Christmas Program for our families.  We sang songs. We sang The Night Before Christmas and The Chipmunk Song.  Mrs. Muench read the story of The Night Before Christmas then we made a movie.  We used the computers to draw presents for the movie that we played while we sang.

We also performed a musical.  First Mrs. Muench read us a book called Mortimer by Robert Munsch.  Next we decided what instruments we would use for sound effects.  We had sound effects for people going up and down the stairs, the door slamming, Mortimer’s head shaking, the policemen’s keys, the fighting, and the song. We used instruments like the drums, cymbals, Boomwhackers, rattles, and Mrs. Muench’s keys.  We liked doing the play because our parents got to come watch. It used teamwork. We like pretending to fight and playing the instrument loudly.  We liked when the brothers and sisters yelled at Mortimer.  That was fun! It was funny when Mortimer snored at the end.  We liked bowing at the end of the play.

We also played a computer game on the Smartboard called Groovy Jungle.  When you rewind a song you wrote the person walks really fast and it looks funny.  We used this game to write our own songs.  We put different beats up.  The beats looked like trees and spider webs.    The spider webs sounded cool.  The trees had a fantastically awesome beat.  Each tree or spider web lasted a certain amount of time.  We could tell how long it lasted because when we put them in the song a line would show up.  If the line was long then sound was long.

1C’s Thoughts on a Band Concert

Today the MS Band came and performed for us.  After the concert 1C had music so we made a short podcast explaining what we enjoyed during the concert.  Hopefully the MS Band students will get a chance to listen to our thoughts!  If you are a MS Band student please feel free to leave your own comments on the podcast here.

http://knowitall.org/gullahmusic/content/activities.html

We performed our song and square dances for the 50 Nifty Concert on Wednesday last week.  I thought the kids did a fantastic job!  I really liked how respectful everyone was while another class was performing.  You were very mature! 

What did you like about the concert?

This week we are going to work on our music and our typing skills! Here’s the website for typing practice:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/