The Bremen Town Musicians – Day 1
Lesson Focus for today:
Storytelling – is an art that takes time and practice. Each day we will be learning about a different tale from around the world and reading about it in our book. Consider asking your child to “share” the story with you or a family member, neighbors, or other children. Each time they “tell” the story they will be honing their skills such as vocal inflections, sound effects, and repeated phrases.

Musical Form – AABC
In our “Galopede” song/dance, we learned dance steps to the music that encourages each child to work together with a partner. Not only does this activity help to develop social skills and attentiveness, it introduces the musical form of AABC. Listen to the song on the CD and see if you and your child can pick out the pattern together.

Timbre – is the distinctive sound that each instrument has. Today in class we created sound effects for each of the characters in our story: donkey, hound dog, cat, rooster. Ask your child what each character sounds like and what instrument closely matches the sound. Using the child’s vocal sounds or the Home CD, encourage the child to retell the story with these sound effects.

The Creative Process – Create your own “chowder” together!
We listened to “Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder” and picked out a variety of ingredients that were mentioned in the song. Try it at home, too! Create your own chowder by creating phrases that included foods for the “chowder” and rhyming phrases. Listen to this song on your Home CD, and then make up our own recipe together complete with silly ingredients and imaginative rhymes.

Vocal Development – is a process that begins by exploring vocal sounds, such as sounds from the environment or animal sounds. Gradually, thye learn to match and produce specific pitches. In Kindermusik class, we introduce a rich and varied repertoire of songs, both for singing and for listening. We specifically choose some songs with a limited range based on the pentatonic scale; the tones of this scale are the easiest for our young singers to hear and sing, starting with the most fundamental and easiest interval to produce. From there, we ad pitches, and children have the opportunity to grow into competent singers by singing carefully chosen songs.

During craft time, we created a “Bremen Town Musician” totem pole with each of the characters in the story. They are stacked on top of each other just like in the tale when they are trying to look into the Robber’s House. See our class picture with our totem poles in hand.