Fizzunkaphone

Levity Beet http://www.levitybeet.com/make-stuff.php

Long and short sounds?

Fling

Music Term 4

Little Rockers

Following on from our Ukelele work I've been putting out a Ukelele and playing my own one. I usually get joined by several children one after the other and I take them through some easy ukelele chord songs. This afternoon I did some blues freestyling and was joined by Emily. She had her own song she wanted to sing, and when this ran out of steam I stepped in and it became a turn taking jam. Hugo M and Savannah Joined us as well, then Ryan stepped in and later Gareth.

They all had some great moves. Aware of the noise factor we moved to the other end of the kindergarten and I did try some quieter tunes about trees and how kind and gentle mums are, but this wasn't to be. I demonstrated how to work what was happening or said around us into tunes and rhyme. As we lost steam I suggested we could watch some rock videos on Youtube. The children agreed and Emily specified girls, so I found Blondie and the Bangles, Ryan enjoying the boys on the guitar with Blondie.

Ukulele

We've hired a class set of ukulele for three weeks. Ngaire Shand (who used to teach Nadine) came and gave us our initial instruction and since then we've practised our c and f chords every day with even a sneak peek at G7.

We've been learning some names for our fingers, Thumb, pointer, tallman, ringman and pinkie, names for parts of the ukulele, head, neck, body, frets, strings, tuning keys, and how to play the c and the f chord. I noticed we were getting pretty quick at swapping so sometimes we even have a go at song were we have to swap from one chord to the other.

We've been learning to play fast and slow, loud and soft as well.

Since Ngaire made us up a song we've also been making up our own songs and have noticed the children have been creating their own songs as well. In addition to as our more formal session for everybody we also have less formal opportunities to play for those who are interested, with a few extra instruments and the option to dance as well.

Mainly Music Easter 2011

Felting

Using the wool they dyed Jo and the children have been keen to experiment with felting. After watching some how too guides on YouTube they had a go. While they patted the felt for ten minutes they also learnt about music, body parts, time, rhythm and counting.

college musicians

Nicola organised the college's junior musicians to come and play for us.

Highlights of our trip to Ngati Whai festival

Here's a few video highlights of our trip Wednesday to the Ngati Whai festival, aroha nui to our hosts and the organisers. Do to the weather we couldn't walk as we'd planned but Brun's Buses came to our rescue so a big thankyou to them, they really have looked after us over the years.

Watch and see if you recognise any past pupils, I do. Thanks for the big hug Kaitlyn Jo and Hope lovely to catch up, hi to Aiden and Harriet, and everyone else as well.

Visit to Cefyn Gauden's studio

To support our look at the virtues of creativity, beauty and perception we travelled to Cefyn Gauden's art studio were we learnt about his pictures, watched him paint, had a go and listened to him play and explain about the drums.

Then we went to Sara and Mike's for amazing arty cupcakes.

Thankyou to everyone who helped on the trip.

Camp fire cookout

We had a lovely time with music, science, stories and sausages but what happened to Adrianne's sandwich?

The Farm At The End of the Road

Today we travelled by bus to Napier Municipal Theatre where we were entertained by an array of puppets and actors. We then went on to have lunch at the park on the Marine Parade before returning home.

Easter 2010

Why Celebrate Easter at Kindergarten and how should we celebrate?

We celebrate Easter at Hunter Park because the “...happenings around the home....should be a feature of all Early childhood learning contexts.” “Links between home and Early Childhood Education programmes are important.” (page 18 NZ Early childhood Curriculum)

But how do we celebrate?

Every home is different some secular some not, do we ignore the religious aspects of Easter and just have an Easter Bunny turn up, do an Easter egg hunt, eat some HCB’s and lots of chocolate or do we include religious aspects?

The curriculum goes on to say “that programmes and resources are sensitive and responsive to the different cultures and heritages among the families of the children attending” the service and further requires that we actively contribute to countering prejudice, (Page 18 NZ Early Childhood Curriculum,) which the human rights act would indicate includes religious intolerance.
Also goal 3 of Strand four of the curriculum specifically states “Children experience and environment where they experience the stories and symbols of their own and other cultures.”

To us this means that as well as more secular traditions and symbols, the religious symbols and stories of families attending the kindergarten (including Christian ones) are encountered, in ways the families owning those traditions feel are appropriate, and that they do have a place within the experience we provide. So yes we do include some religious aspects of celebrations like Easter and Christmas as well as things like our regular grace/karakia before meals in our programme. (See also goals 1 and 2 of strand 2, all the goals of strand 3, and goal 4 of strand 5, along with the Principles, relationships, family and community and empowerment.)

Easter also has great relevance to our virtues programme.
The key messages of the Christian Easter tradition tie in very well with our virtues programme.

Reflection/Forgiveness/Striving
One of the key messages of the Christian Easter tradition is recognising our own failings. We all fall short of the mark at times (literally sin), knowingly and unknowingly. Easter is a traditional time to remember and reflect on our failings and then to move on and do better, both forgiving others and ourselves as we strive to be the best person our conscience tells us we can be.

Service/Sacrifice
Easter is also a time to remember the message that service and sacrifice for others leads to a better world for all, just as hurting others hurts ourselves.

Hope/Courage/Love
Finally Easter is a time of renewal and rebirth reminding us that even when all seems lost the light of hope remains and it is our turn to pass on and receive the spiritual flame, the fire within us to overcome barriers and build communities, of love, hope, caring and kindness.

Easter Happenings
This Easter we made baskets, decorated eggs, made bunny masks and held an egg hunt where the object was to work together and children were taught, not to grab as many eggs for themselves as they could but to share with everyone. If a child did try to grab all the eggs for themselves, we forgave them and gently helped them to be a little less fearful of missing out, a little less egocentric and learn instead that it was our expectation that they think of and help others as well as themselves. Some of the children also shared with us about their choices of what they gave up for lent.

We also were lucky enough to be able to welcome two of our parents from the St Andrew's Mainly Music team. So a big thank you to Sarah-Jane and Miriam for their courage as they shared songs with us, and a puppet show that presented some of the Christian meanings they saw behind the various Easter Symbols old and new, such as the shiny paper, the hollow egg, the chick, the bunny, the Hot Cross Buns and of course CHOCOLATE!

Higland Cd arrived

Our new highland dance cd "leap and rock" volume I, arrived today. We purchased it due to the on going interest in highland dancing which up to now we've only been able support with some irish pipe and jigs by Declan Masterton. We put it on and started to explore the possibilities. Perhaps we need some old school kilts in our dance clothes!

Following a beat is a good way to learn about numbers, physically and mentally.

Julie Appleton-Seymours Dancers visited.

Edit please excuse my error on the video (trying to do to many jobs at once when I made it). In the title I meant dances, not dancers, though we did see lots of them too.

Here's some video highlights of over an hour and a half of dancing.

Julie Appleton-Seymour brought in around 20 of her dancers including a number of our past and current pupils. Lots of people came to watch the show including Grandparents, some even over from England.

Some of our children stayed glued to their seats (or up and dancing), watching and joining the dancers for the whole show, while others took the oppertunity to go outside to play, often coming back in to see more.

All of them got some thing special from the show.

One little girl, on a Kindergarten visit with mum, joined in with full energy, getting commended by Julie for her efforts.

At one point Julie noticed Emily and Gina clapping in time and after the dance got them to stand up and she remaked how wonderful it was that they were clapping in time. After that much more clapping followed which Julie further supported and encouraged.

She showed us some simple steps, and talked to us about how they can help children develop.

Afterwards I was amazed at who was dancing, many who hadn't been willing to get up with all the people there where dancing away "look at me!"

More Dancing

Not all the dancing pictures I wanted, some seem to have been lost, but here's some more of the dancing this time with Grace, Caleb, Katy and Meadow mainly, and some shots of us reviewing the youtube ballets. Caleb seems to have a heavy crumping influence on his style, and possibly some hulk, which all adds to our knowledge of dance literacy.

Dancers

With many of our children in Julie's dance recital , they've been practising flat tack. Last week they kept coming up and asking for dance music, I offer them a range of options as always from Billy Idol and Celtic bagpipes to Swan lake. Today's choice was Nutcracker (hope I got that right, might be some swan lake in there to.) Together we explored the literacy of dance. I'm a firm believer that everyone should dance, boys and girls, grown ups and kids, even if I must admit I laugh when I see myself up there, it's fun.

As the week went by our group continued to grow, with boys too, we also watched some great ballet dancers, male and female, on line on youtube. (Including our favourite Chinese acrobatic group dancing swan lake.)

We dance all the time at Hunter Park, but we certainly danced a lot last week. More video to come featuring some highland dance and more. I've also invited some highland dancers this week to come in and show us some moves on Thursday.

This video from the 17th features Grace, Gina, Charlotte, Elise, Eden, a little of Billie, Meadow and Kaitlyn Jo and a strange huge dancing butterfly or possibly caterpillar, we call crash for obvious reasons.

Old lady who swallowed a fly

Kiri's Voice:
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.... do you know why?
The children today enjoyed a fun story and puppet show that I had brought in from home. The children were great at practicing patience, waiting for their turn, as well as learning to deal with disappointment if they didn't get their chosen animal. The children were using memory to recall which animal was going to be next and recalling which animals had been swallowed before, and they didn't complain once about my singing! What a great bunch of helpers they were for me and very attentive too. Kiri Fraser.
Pai ki ahau ki te whakarongo koutou tamariki. I like the way you all listened children.


David's Voice:
I was really impressed by Kiri's impromptu mat time. The children were able to come and go as they needed, and I noticed when children moved away (after all sitting still is the hardest balancing skill ) they were still very aware of the story and returned to it as soon as it restarted.

Informal free choice versus formal compulsory mattimes are something a lot of earlychildhood settings are currently thinking about.

Kiri must have sung the story twenty times, as new children joined in and others asked for it again and again, her group getting larger and larger. She managed the many and varied demands very well.

As we watched the video together and it was fascinating to see all the different ways the children had of participating in the story, each at a level they were comfortable with and it's not always necessary to sit up straight to be actively participating. I noticed Aidan dropping the old lady book on his head while he waited for the story to get organised, then sitting up ready to join in again as soon as it started.

I noticed how the children joining the mat would often stand on the outside observing the social rules of the group, figuring out how they could fit in. Often they innovated how they would participate, as when Lachie found his own puppet or Emma and Gina got chairs to become an audience. They also experienced negotiating and compromise as they weren't always able to get what they wanted straight away.

There was also sequencing, a math's skill.

As well as the, maths, music and social side of things there was also problem solving as the children figured out how to fit the puppets into the old lady.
Great story Kiri.

Our Fairy

David's voice:

When the girls asked for princess music I decided rather than put it straight on, I would challenge and extend their ideas around it a bit first.

The first piece I played them was and Irish reel. "That's not princess music they told me."

Not put off and despite a gouty foot, I managed to demonstrate a fair reel, but they still weren't happy so I pulled up the next piece I'd selected as potential princess music. Billy Idol's 'white wedding.'

Another demonstration, but sure enough "That's not princess music, that's rock music."

So I moved on to some Strauss 'Leichtes Blut- Light as a feather' a toss dance. This they had to think about, it was obviously nearly princess music, but not quite. "That's not princess music either."

Annalise was finally forced by my obstinate ignorance to rethink her question and draw on her experiences to rephrase her request. "Barbie music is princess music."

"Oh I said."

I tried them on Khatschaturian's 'sabre dance.' "Is this Barbie music."

I could see them think again.

"No swan lake."

Oh I said you want some Tschaikowsky, he wrote swan lake."

"No swan lake is from Barbie."

"Well I'll try this Tschaikowsky 'Swan lake' and we'll see if it's the same."

Oh my it was!

"Yes that's it."

"Oh so Tschaikowsky must have written the music for Barbie's swan lake."

I then challenged them further, by dancing with them.

"You can't dance you're a boy, boys can't be princesses."

"Yes I can I'm a beautiful boy princess see I've got my princess dress on." It didn't fit on my head or tummy so I stuck one on each leg.

We had a lot of fun leaping and dancing together in the waltz parts I picked them up and twirled them around, till they quite wore me out with "me next". We went on to 'Sleeping beauty' and 'The nutcracker', and then I asked Elise if she wanted me to play "For Elise."

She did and Annalise recognised it from 'Young Einsteins' "That's from the t.v. with the rocket."

Later at mat I reinforced our discovery that the Barbie music was by Tschaikowsky, several times and then put some on to dance too. We all sat in a circle and who ever wanted to dance could. Then I let those who'd been dancing go off to wash their hands or stay dancing if they wanted. With this license to dance soon nearly everybody was up, by the time of last snippet of music, only two children still felt too shy to dance. And once more the boys demonstrated they were the some of the best dancers, Caleb W and Connor especially (They'd also demonstrated this the other day doing their take on what highland dancing would look like a mix a crumping and breakdancing apparently. :) ) I was glad of this as earlier I'd noticed at least three boys wanting to dance but not confident enough to give it a go with all the girls dominating the dance floor, now they got their chance.

Amazing what can happen when you decide to be ignorant ;).