Let's Play Music - 1st Year!*

Fall 2022 - Red Balloons

In our first semester of Let's Play Music, Red Balloons, we begin building a musical foundation! The songs and activities we do teach the children to:

• match pitch and recognize middle C
  
• recognize pitch relationships through solfege syllables and hand signs
• become familiar and comfortable with the major scale and other melodic patterns
• recognize primary chords and their functions
• accompany themselves and a group on an instrument (bells and autoharp)
• read a chord map
• feel internal beat
• perform tempo change
• read notes on the staff and staff relationships
• imitate and identify rhythms
• actively listen to classical music and recognize form and themes

Spring 2023 - Blue Bugs

In Blue Bugs, we continue building upon the skills and concepts learned in Red Balloons, adding more detail and difficulty:

• more melodic/cadence patterns
• staff reading and relationships (skips, steps, and leaps)
• rhythmic notation and identification
• subdividing beat
• internal beat (holding whole note)
• harmonic rhythm
• major vs. minor tonality
• simple song form (phrases and cadence)

*Everything taught in subsequent semesters reinforces concepts learned in previous semesters. Because of this, Let's Play Music must be taken across three consecutive 2-semester years. If you are interested in joining a class mid-semester or midyear in Red Balloons/Blue Bugs, contact Miss Steph and she will let you know how to do that. It might take a little extra work to catch up, but it can be done!