Musical Instrument Demonstration

Many thanks to Deanne's neighbor who was kind enough to give us an up close demonstration of lots of woodwind instruments.  The kids were enraptured by his presentation. 

Which included a short description of each instrument and him letting us all hear what they each sounded like...

The kids were surprisingly good for the whole thing....

But excitedly headed back over to Truman's house afterward...

So they could make their own little instruments out of plastic Easter eggs filled with beans, rice, or lentils.  The adults used strips of packing tape to seal them together to prevent spillage. 

Then the kids painstakingly placed stickers all over them to make them fancy....

Then we played a game where the kids passed around one of the eggs while the music was playing and whoever was holding the egg when the music stopped got to be out and go get a treat.  It was great, since no one had to be sad about getting out, since there was a treat awaiting them. 

After the treat, they sat down and had a little indoor picnic with their lunches. 

Everyone had a wonderful time learning more about musical instruments and getting to spend the time with their preschool friends.  Thanks Deanne and Heather for making it happen!

Music

Preschool on Thursday was noisy! And fun! Did I mention noisy?!

To get us in a musical mood, we sang along with these sing-along books:

And we read Max Found Two Sticks, a story about a little boy who found two sticks and used them to beat the rhythm of sounds in his neighborhood.

So we used chopsticks and tried to beat along to the rhythm of my car alarm, an alarm clock, and other rhythms at my house.

We tried to play Name That Tune, but we spent more time talking about how you won't get called on every time your hand is raised (but the teacher still notices you) than we did guessing tunes. Not getting called on is very disappointing.

Dancing: We danced to different types of music (fast, slow, happy, hoppy, sad, marchy, scary) with streamers. Or, in Rachel's case, we wore the streamer like a bride and danced around.

Musical Mats:

Maracas: We really concentrated on making fancy maracas.

Multi-tasking: These girls could do all three! Maracas, streamers, and kazoos.

Magic Shapes: We practiced guessing and cutting magic shapes (fold a paper in half and draw half a shape - bone, house, square, flower, etc like you'd do if you were going to cut out a heart). Here, Simone thinks she has a leaf...

Peter and the Wolf and Smart Kids

Once we hit January, and the half-year mark, I started to feel the pain of sending my little one off to Kindergarten. But it still seemed so far away. However, watching these kids on Tuesday (who are ready for Kindergarten!) made September seem right around the corner.

We talked about our names a lot. We discovered that Maylie has the word "May" in her name. And Gavin has the word "in" in his. Gavin wanted to know what each of our names would sound like without the beginning sound. That's a kindergarten skill: breaking words apart. I was so excited!

The kids had no problem looking for two number cubes with dots totalling 9. Wow!

When I started reading Peter and the Wolf, Rachel said, "This book is fiction. I know."

The kids are feeling so independent, serving themselves. Guess who was the only person who spilled while pouring the water? me.

And, it was so exciting to watch the kids trying to make words out of their Cheezits. Several of the kids were making 3 - 5 letter words like box, rat, pant. Maylie found T for Taryn.

Daniel was worried that he couldn't read any words, but when I put N and O in front of him, he could sound out the word "NO". And look! He's raising his hand (not sure why). That'll come in handy next year!

Peter and the Wolf

The topic yesterday was Peter and the Wolf. This was my favorite version of the story:

Last year Lara showed part of a YouTube video of Peter and the Wolf which was really cute, but one little one was way too scared (of even the music) to view it. I put it off, hoping to have time at the end so those who wanted to watch could, and those who didn't could play. But we ran out of time. And I don't know how to include a link. Just look to the right under Peter and the Wolf. She included a link.

Peter and the Wolf puppets:

The kids had a lot of fun coloring finger puppets from Peter and the Wolf. And trying to contain them in their *garden* (recycled boxes with a fold-out door for the gate). The boys thought up ways to make the wolf extra dangerous (Daniel tried to add lightning; Matthew suggested coloring lava around the wolf's mouth, and Gavin wanted both). Even Ellie declared with a smile on her face, "I'm going to make my wolf bad. Really bad." Maylie was the only one who wanted a purple wolf that would be pretty, not scary.

"Grrr"

9 Things from Peter and the Wolf:

Here are Gavin and Maylie, practicing counting and writing their numbers.

Before I layed out the characters and instruments, I asked the kids which characters and instruments were in the story, and collectively, they remembered all of them. So smart!

Opposites Game

Here's Matthew picking a stick from each cup. One cup contained *actions*, the other cup contained opposites.

Here they are, crawling quickly.

And here are the girls, crawling slowly. I'm not sure why none of the boys are in this picture. I think they crawled as slowly as their little boy bodies could possibly handle, but not as slowly as the girls.

And this was the favorite: jumping loudly. I'm sure it was my work-from-home-husband's favorite too :)

Learning About Peter and the Wolf

Today in preschool we learned all about Peter and the Wolf. First we read a story about being a good friend, then we went on to talk about the friendship Peter, the cat, bird, and duck had. Then we looked at the different kinds of musical instruments used in the story and even got to hear the clarinet played in person.

We watched a little video with a cute cartoon version of the story and the kids loved listening for the different instruments throughout. Most of the kids were enraptured and wanted to keep watching, but one of the children was getting very scared at the cat chasing the bird so I decided to end it early before they could be traumatized by the wolf gobbling up the duck. :)

After we turned off the video, we just listened to parts of the story and narration, conveniently skipping over the scarier parts. I figured the point of the lesson was to learn to listen for the different instruments not for an accurate analysis of fine literature/music, so I let them interpret the story any way they liked. In our version the duck was not eaten (I completely skipped this part), the wolf shrunk in size and turned nice before calmly being taken to the zoo, and the cat repented for his mistake of chasing the bird and transformed into a nice cat.

Then we did a coloring activity with the different characters from the story and the kids matched up each character’s corresponding instrument and glued it next to them. They all seemed to have a good time and if you were interested in following through with this, you could have them listen to different types of music and try to figure out what kind of instrument is playing. Peter and the Wolf is available for purchase on itunes and the cute cartoon video we watched is linked here if you wanted to watch the rest (they watched part 1, but not part 2).

We missed Gavin today. Hope he feels better very soon!