What We're Learning

At this point in their musical education your child knows many of the basic building blocks of a song and is ready to dive into more complex and exciting musical elements. I will break down the musical elements into three main categories; rhythm, melody and form. Rhythm refers to the pattern of long and short notes that create a song. Melody refers to the higher and lower tones or pitches that are used to create a song. Form refers to how songs are put together.

We startead off the year reviewing our known rhythmic elements: quarter note (ta), two eighth notes (ti-ti), quarter rest (rest) and half note (too). Earlier in the year we spent time exploring and learning about four sixteenth notes (tika-tika), and we are currently preparing a "mystery" rhythm that has 3 sounds over 2 beats!

We came into 3rd grade already knowing our melody notes do, mi, so & la. So spent some time earlier in our year learning about re which is the melody note between do and mi. This means have mastered the Pentatonic Scale, which is a five tone scale compromised of do, re, mi, so, and la. The scale is considered to be a mile marker in our musical knowledge because of the vast amount of music that can be created with these five tones.

Song Bank

Using the Kodály method, I teach mainly using folk songs. These songs are typically passed down through the generations in a vocal tradition which creates many variants - so you may know a slightly different version than what I teach in class! The beauty of using folk songs to do the bulk of the learning is that each song has a game that corresponds with it - so the kids are learning even when they are playing!

Here are some songs that your child should know from music class!

  • Hot Cross Buns

  • Among Us

  • Somebody's Knockin' At My Door

  • Closet Key

  • Alabama Gal