Green Turtles #12

NEED TO KNOW

Green Turtles #12: Your Green Turtles are doing great! I'm seriously proud of them! They are able to play all three chords with their right hands and it's amazing! I'm excited for Yellow Arrows when we add in the left hand. Exciting stuff!

CHORD FINGERINGS: Remember that the red and the blue chords are played with fingers 1-3-5, while the yellow chord uses 1-2-5. This will get easier as they do it regularly. All of your turtles are doing great at this, and correcting it fast with a reminder if they get it wrong at the start.

PRACTICE THOUGHTS: Your at-home daily play should only be lasting 10 minutes at the very most at this point. Make it a game, too! See if they can play three red chords, three blue chords, and three yellow chords before their brother finishes brushing his teeth. 

PARENT DAY/TUITION DUE: Next week after will be a parent day, and the last tuition payment of the semester will be due. I'll send an invoice between now and then to remind you.

JURY DUTY: I have jury duty (for the first time in the twelve years we've lived here!) the week of November 30-December 4. If I don't need to go in on class day (either Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll find out the night before), we'll have Lesson #14 that day as scheduled, followed by the Lesson #15, the last of the semester, on December 8/9. If I DO have to go in, we will take that day off and push the semester out by a week, so we'll have Lesson #14 on December 8/9 and Celebration Day, the last class of the semester, on December 15/16. I will text you the night before class to verify either way.

GOOD TO KNOW

MYSTERY BUG: We played a new rhythm game called Mystery Bug which is quite fun. I put four separate rhythm cards out, but the one on the 3rd beat is flipped over so you can't see which bug it is. The person who knows the mystery bug claps the entire 4 count measure and the students identify which rhythm (bug) was heard on the 3rd beat. We flipped it over and cheered because what they heard matched what was on the card! 

FUN TO KNOW

Three Hoedown-themed "fun to know" sections in a row! I really do love this puppet show. Here is a video of the United States Marine Band playing Hoedown from Rodeo. It is so fun to see which instruments play the sounds we know so well!

Green Turtles #11

NEED TO KNOW

Green Turtles #11: Parents, your Green Turtles are fantastic! I'm so proud of their hard work and how they are doing hard things!

BLUE CHORD: We officially introduced how to play the Blue Chord with the right hand. Ah-mazing! They did a great job with "Do has the thumb and the others go up one." Blue Chord is played with 1-3-5, the same fingers that play the Red Chord. It is time to put blue stickers on the keyboard and/or color your Chord Helper with blue! Here are some pictures to make sure you get it right the first time.

Also, here is the link to a Skills Video to help solidify playing the blue chord!

SONGBOOK MARKING: More coloring chords to help us see the differences! Here are the two songs we colored this week. If your student wasn't there or didn't finish or didn't have a songbook, update your books! (We only colored the blue chords in Blue Sky. I told your students that if they want to color the red chords, they can do that at home.

GOOD TO KNOW

TURTLE SHELLS: We continue to find intervals both on the staff, on the keyboard, and in our chords. The skill of seeing intervals will help to becoming a great sight reader!

ECHO EDNA: A good musician knows what a song sounds like after he plays it. A great musician can figure out what it sounds like before. Echo Edna gives the students practice in looking at a group of notes and figuring it out with the steps and the skips, singing it, then playing it. 

FUN TO KNOW

Aaron Copland, the composer of our Hoedown puppet show, was an American composer born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900, and was amazingly influential in creating American classical music. Many musicians of this time were dismissing traditional American music (including jazz, blues, and hoedown) as less important music. Copland not only embraced and highlighted American music, but showed how it belongs in the world music library. Last week I shared a blogpost with lots of information on Copland. Here is a video of Aaron Copland himself conducting Hoedown. He is so fantastic!