(no subject)
Some things were crap about today - a lot of kids didn't show up for their singing lessons because of exams etc. But I'm over being pissed off about that and just thought I'd share a few things about teaching younguns that I've discovered.
1. Grade 1s CAN sing in tune, it's just they can't do massive big leaps, only stepwise/small interval stuff that's within a certain pitch range.
2. It's AMAZING how different 10 year olds are. I have 3x 10 year old girls. All 3 of them are phenomenally talented, have great pitch, are great sightreaders etc. Two of them, looking at them I'd swear they were 13/14, one of them I'd swear she was 8.
3. You know what I've found works really well with young kids? When I was singing songs with young kids yesterday and today, I asked them lots of questions about what they were singing about and let them make the decisions. Eg. Puff the magic dragon. What does Puff's castle look like? What kind of trees are there? What colour is Puff the magic dragon? What does little Jackie look like? What time of day is it? How much is ten thousand tonnes of ice cream?
And every time we came across a word they didnt understand, I made sure they knew what it meant. If there was a word they didn't like, we changed it to another word. Eg. singing a song about a dog called Blue, I let them decide what the dog's name was. When we were singing jibberish words (Hey diddle diddle etc) I let them change it around. When we were warming up with exercises, I got them to choose different vowel and consonant sounds. It's SO amazing how creative they can be.
Ok that's about all I have to say.
Fleen
1. Grade 1s CAN sing in tune, it's just they can't do massive big leaps, only stepwise/small interval stuff that's within a certain pitch range.
2. It's AMAZING how different 10 year olds are. I have 3x 10 year old girls. All 3 of them are phenomenally talented, have great pitch, are great sightreaders etc. Two of them, looking at them I'd swear they were 13/14, one of them I'd swear she was 8.
3. You know what I've found works really well with young kids? When I was singing songs with young kids yesterday and today, I asked them lots of questions about what they were singing about and let them make the decisions. Eg. Puff the magic dragon. What does Puff's castle look like? What kind of trees are there? What colour is Puff the magic dragon? What does little Jackie look like? What time of day is it? How much is ten thousand tonnes of ice cream?
And every time we came across a word they didnt understand, I made sure they knew what it meant. If there was a word they didn't like, we changed it to another word. Eg. singing a song about a dog called Blue, I let them decide what the dog's name was. When we were singing jibberish words (Hey diddle diddle etc) I let them change it around. When we were warming up with exercises, I got them to choose different vowel and consonant sounds. It's SO amazing how creative they can be.
Ok that's about all I have to say.
Fleen