Fun with Guitars!

Today we welcomed JP, another of the itinerant music teachers, to our class to talk to us about guitars. He showed us all the main parts of a guitar and how it works. With their growing background knowledge of sound and musical instruments, the children asked some great questions and were making much deeper observations than in our earlier lessons. And yes, he too could play "Freaks" on request...

What's inside a piano?

This week the musically-talented Mrs Ngan showed us all about how a piano makes sound. She took the piano in the hall to pieces and let us look inside, and we tried playing the keys and seeing the hammers hit the strings. Thanks Mrs Ngan!

On our devices...

Over the last 4-5 weeks, we've been using an app called Book Creator on the ipads during maths and reading time. We've been making book reviews and modelling 3-digit numbers on a range of materials.  We've been learning some basic skills of how to take photos and type text within this app. Here are a few examples...

For publishing written work, we use the Chromebooks and classroom iMacs. We're learning how to access our Google Drives, and how to create work within the folders on the drive. Little by little, we'll be learning about the conventions of word processing like spacing, capitalising, and underlining using Google Docs and Google Slides. Here are some examples of our first pieces of typing.

13.3.18

How a saxophone works

The saxophone is a woodwind instrument.This is how a saxophone works.
You first blow it with your mouth. The mouthpiece has a reed and the
reed vibrates. The saxophone has lots of pads which block the air.
When you blow it you need to push the key to change the pitch of the
sound. The saxophone is really heavy and really hard to blow.The
saxophone is a little bit different to a trombone. The saxophone has a really
big bell at the end of the saxophone.

by Beichen

8.3.18

HOW A THUMB PIANO WORKS

A thumb piano is a percussion instrument.They have twelve keys
on them. They look like a stick. When you press the keys the keys
vibrate. The base box has two circle shaped holes. This makes the
sound waves louder .The High pitch is made by the short keys.
The low pitch is make by the long keys.

by Anne

Over the next few weeks we'll be working towards making slides about things we're doing like this - here's Sarah's first try.

Top Brass!

Today we had a visit from one of our Musiqhub teachers. Shaun teaches brass and woodwind, and today he brought along a trumpet, trombone, saxophone and some clarinet reeds to show us how they work. He played all kinds of songs spontaneously on request, including "Freaks"!

Investigating Sound

This week we got busy playing a range of musical instruments. We were asking these key questions: Can we make a sound? Can we stop the sound? Can we change the sound? Can we see or feel the part of the instrument that's vibrating? These are some of the instruments we tried out...

thumb piano

xylophone

triangle

wood block

swing drum

tambourine with a skin

baby taiko drum

And how did it sound, you must be wondering? Something like this!

Scenes from the week

This week we started learning about our ears! We were amazed to learn that our ears have three tiny bones inside them, as well as a chamber filled with liquid and tiny hairs. In these photos we're making 2D models.

This term we have music with Miss Laxon. As her music room is being used as a classroom this term, she brings her instruments to our class and does the lesson there. The children have been learning about music from around the world. They've been identifying changes in tempo and pitch, and moving accordingly.

Finally, despite Mr Smith being away at camp we managed to fit in a PE session with Miss Taylor. She planned and set up some fun soccer activities!

Welcome, Beichen!

This week we welcomed a new student to Rm 21. Beichen and his family have recently moved up to Auckland . If you see him or his family around please say hi!