Musical Measures and Treat for Nana

Today we took a closer look at our music.  

I showed the girls the bar that separated each measure of music.

Currently I am only teaching them music in 4/4 time (4 beats to each measure).  We use this for our reward system too. Here is the link to that earlier post.  

How many beats earns a mommy dollar?  

answer: 4

So even though they may struggle with number recognition, I know they fully understand the concept of math since they are already working on simple fractions. 

We then used our rhythm sticks to tap out a few different measures.

I then gave the girls a project, giving them notes, sticks and Lego's.

Each beat got 1 Lego.  So a half note got 2 Lego's and a whole note got 4 and so on.

Each measure of music could only hold 4 beats or Lego's.  Once they had used up their 4 beats or Lego's they laid down a stick to start a new measure.

Each girl made their own musical score.

Next we warmed up our vocals singing the intro to Do-re-mi from 

"The Sound of Music"

"Let's start at the very beginning, 

a very good place to start.

When you read you begin with ABC.

When you sing you begin with Do-re-mi

Do-re-mi

The first three notes just happen to be

Do-re-mi"

After we warmed up our vocals we warmed up our fingers with our finger play song.

remember this post?

1- Thumpkin

2- Pointer

3- Tall man

4- Ring man

5- Pinkie

Next we combined the two using a song from our music for little Mozart program.

Then we had a chance to bring our 1,2,3's and Do-re-mi's to the piano.

26 years ago my mom started giving me piano lessons,

 Because Nana and Papa came to visit us this week 

I thought it would be fun to let the girls play their very first song in front of Nana. 

The very same song she began my lessons with.

a song I will never forget.