Category: MTMS Blog Posts

Recitals – Not Too Late

There’s still time to sign up for recitals. Performance is a key part of learning music and learning real life skills. Music helps reduce stress in the lives of those who create it and listen to it. There are no studies who talk about the drawbacks of adding music into life- only more and more benefits. I learned recently that learning music can help learn foreign languages, and then I remember I haven’t picked up my guitar today. Maybe I can sign up for the next virtual playlist.

This current recital is full of fun activities and great music. Sign up today!

Recitals

Preschool Music Activities

Teaching music to preschoolers is incredibly rewarding. It can also be challenging. Preschoolers are enthusiastic, energetic learners, which makes them fun to teach, but it also means a lot of squirrely behavior in the classroom.

One strategy to keep your preschool-aged kiddos engaged in your music lesson is to include a lot of variety. With that in mind, we’ve started a list of short, easy preschool music activities you can incorporate.

  • Start with a “Hello” song. End with a “Goodbye” song.
  • Listen to music and create art that matches the music. Example: listen to Blue Danube and color a river.
  • “Emotions” game: listen to a song and ask the children if that song makes them feel happy, sad, or scared. Each child gets to draw an emoji or attach an emoji sticker demonstrating that feeling onto a card. While listening to the song, the children may color and decorate their emotions card.
  • Play coffee can drums to practice Kodaly rhythms (ta ta, ti-ti-ti-ti).
  • To the tune of “Mulberry Bush”, sing and act out with claves: “This is the way we tap our sticks…”. Add variations like “hammer our sticks” or “scrape our sticks”, and let the children make up their own variations (“row the boat”, “sweep the floor”, etc.)
  • Act out songs with guided movement, like “Ten in the Bed” or “If You’re Happy and You Know It”.
  • Have each child choose a food to speak in rhythm like “Pepperoni Pizza” or “Strawberry Pop-Tart” and play it on different instruments.
  • Use the Music for Little Mozarts book and accompaniment series to play “Racing Car” on the piano, which features glissandos (representing the race) and tap-tap-tap on three black keys (representing a honking car going “beep beep beep”).
  • Play an energetic song and allow the children to dance with colorful scarves. Add the “Freeze Game” by pausing the song every so often, which is the cue for the kiddos to freeze in place until the music starts back up again.
  • Music solos: each child gets to take a turn “performing” (improvising) on an instrument. Time the performance, allowing 30-60 seconds to jam. When time is up, the performer bows to the audience (the rest of the class), while the audience applauds.

Do you have music activities you’ve used successfully with preschoolers? How about activities that didn’t work? We’d love to hear some of the ideas you would add to the list.

Happy teaching!

Survey in the Lab This Week!

Occasionally we ask our students questions and they tell us their answers. I like to give people a chance to respond here, too, and then report back about it next time on the blog.

What’s your favorite genre of music?
Pop
Hip-hop
Rock
Jazz
Country
Classical
Folk
Show Tunes

While we know genres that aren’t included in the list, I encourage you to try these if you’ve never, and rank what you like for yourself or what you listen to with your kids, or what you put up with in a public space versus what makes you want to leave right away. Music is everywhere (and I love it) but we don’t all react to all of the music in the same way. I guarantee if I hear Christmas music in July in my kid’s room, I’m not going to stay too long. I linger longer if either kid is practicing an instrument, however.

Enjoy the day, enjoy the music, and let us know what you love to listen to.

Songwriting and Creative Outlets

Did you know we teach songwriting? Songwriting is a specific creative endeavor in the musical field that often includes the storytelling aspect with words (lyrics). While conflict and movement can be done with instruments alone, many of our popular songs today have a range of styles that include words and instruments. A Capella is a style with singing alone covering both the lyrics and the instrumental portions of the song. Many orchestra pieces have only the instruments and no lyrics at all.

But while we focus on the popular song styles, because it is good to learn all of the pieces of songwriting before exploring any one in detail, we cover the basic parts of a song and build them one at a time to help understand each of them: refrain/chorus, verses, intro, outro, bridge, instrumental interlude, and pre-chorus. We cover rhythm, melody, harmony, time signatures, chord progression, and the hook.

If you’re starting to feel that itch about wanting to be creative, to let out some of those ideas that pop into your head, grab a notebook or your nearest digital notetaking device, and also head to this October NaNoWriMo Prep Challenge. Never heard of NaNoWriMo? It’s National Novel Writing Month, and you don’t actually have to try that. (It’s difficult, trust me, because I’ve tried it.) But the beauty of the Challenge is to allow your ideas to take shape, whether they end up in a story, a poem, a song, or another medium. Don’t be afraid to allow your creativity to guide you!

Actually, this post makes me want to write a song now… How about you?