September 2023

Welcome to the new school year in the music room!

These last few weeks we've been learning new songs and playing new games to work on our music skills.

Preschool, Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade learned a new welcome song called "Hello Everybody, How Do You Do?" While singing this song, we work on making eye contact with others and practice singing with different dynamics and tempos.

In 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, we've been working on "Find Your Light," a written song by the filmmaker Greg Pritikin for his film The Last Laugh. In the movie, the song was sung by Richard Dreyfuss, but it seems the song was never released commercially, because I have yet to find it available anywhere other than in the movie. You can listen to my own rendition of the song here. This is a song about hope in the face of uncertainty, encouraging us to do our best and take courage by finding our inner light—a valuable lesson for students to take to heart.

All grades have also been playing "Doggy, Doggy, Where's Your Bone?," a fun call-and-response song that we've been singing to practice our listening, rhythm, and improvisation skills. To play it, we form a circle and everyone gets a drum. As we sing, we play the rhythm on our drums—being sure to keep a steady beat with the song and listening to others so no one overpowers anyone else. Then, we take take turns playing solos, making up our own rhythms on the drum to complement the beat. This is a great way to practice building confidence with our performance skills.

Next month, we'll working on using pitched instruments, including xylophone and keyboards!