notesMusic Lessons

The String Family

Maybe you’ve never really considered yourself very musical. Maybe you sing like a nightingale. Maybe you quit the flute three months after you picked it up. That’s okay. Music is in all of us, and even just by popping a CD into the stereo, or turning on your mp3 player, we’re tapping into its power. Students tap into the power of music as they learn to recognize the voices in the string family, find out that pitch doesn't always involve a baseball, learn just what sheep, horsehair, rattlesnake tails, and violins have to do with each other, and strum sweet sounds from their own washtub bass.

I Bet You Think This Song Is About You

Students struggle with vocabulary but seem to learn the lyrics to the latest song effortlessly. If only there was a way to harness that power! There is, through music and lyrics students are able to practice a wide variety of language skills [reading, writing, listening, and speaking] in a fun manner. In this lesson we provide an easy formula for bringing music into the classroom and getting that tricky vocabulary into their brains. Included are some great sample activities to get you started with Carly Simon's infamous, "You're So Vain" And later they get to write some new and funky lyrics of their own.