Music in the Primary School

Hallowe’en week was a student and faculty favorite in Primary Music.  

Learning is  fun in music class especially when all of the skills and conceptual learning is done through fantastic Halloween musical activities and students are donned with silly glasses, masks and costumes.

There was a special guest teacher, “Glissando” the shy (and often very loud)  witch puppet, who took  students through a mirroring/movement game while listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”.   Glissando had so much fun with the children reading “Shake Them Halloween Bones” and “The Little Old Lady Who Was Afraid of Nothing” as the students sang and performed on percussion instruments.

Students  made ghostly rhythms and performed on the barred instruments.  PYP 4 and 5 students learned to play “Skin and Bones” on their recorders. In the song “Only in October” students learned how to play a tremolo, how to play piano and sing forte and what to listen for to identify differences between Major and minor scales.

No Halloween class would be complete with a listening/dancing game of musical statues to the song, “Monster Mash”. Our classes ended by having a ghoulish dance to a Halloween version of “Gangam Style” titled “Zombie Style”.

Ms. Linda deBoer

Primary Music Teacher