Music Element 1: Dynamics
Winter is coming to Greenhill. A story by Triquetrae Tales from our Preschool program.
Week one of the winter program focuses on dynamics and the ability to recognise sounds that are loud and soft. Piano the Rabbit is soft and Forte the Elephant is loud.
Download the book from this link
Follow along with the words on the video
Listen and Bop
Listen to the loud and soft sounds on this track. When the sounds are loud use big movements as you dance along to the music. When the sounds are soft use small movements.
In week one in addition to the music making group we offer literacy and numeracy skills. Week one uses the letter A, the number 1, the colour red and the shape of a triangle and a straight line. We include worksheets on all these items to be used in our additional child development workshops.
Small Muscle Development
The development of the small muscles is vital for playing any musical instrument.
Small motor skills concern the development of smaller muscle movements, mostly in the hands and fingers. Small motor skill development also involves hand-eye coordination. Small motor skills are responsible for grasping, holding, and manipulating small objects. For example, small motor skills are needed to pick up a crayon, hold a crayon and move it on a surface. Site link
Letters & Numbers
When a child can move a little further to drawing lines, curves and following shapes with a finger you can move on to letter tracers. These are reception age worksheets.
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A guide to writing skills at different ages can be found here
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Shapes
From octagonal stop signs and rectangular doors, to triangular roofs and circular wheel, shapes are everywhere. Learning shapes not only helps children identify and organize visual information, it helps them learn skills in other curriculum areas including reading, math, and science. Link Week 1 music focuses on loud sounds and soft sounds. Lots of circle shapes make sounds. The clock face is a circle and makes a quiet sound most of the time, but sometimes makes a loud sound. A wheel on a car is a circle shape the also makes a soft sound most of the time, but sometimes makes a loud sound. What other circle sounds can you see and hear today?
Encourage the children to talk about the attributes of a circle: round, never-ending and made up of a closed curved line. Explain that a circle is a type of line. Say: “Imagine a line that is bent all the way around until its ends join.” Give the children pieces of yarn that they can manipulate from a line into a circle. For more circle ideas see this link. |  |
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Major Minor's Music Academy first ran in the early 2000's. This is one of the early videos for playing instruments loud and soft.