PK (Thursday)–September: In PK, we have been learning about steady beat. We have been using various songs for moving and keeping a steady beat with our hand and feet. We have also read two Pete the Cat stories and used spoken rhythm to help us perform with Pete. October: We will be using our steady beat and sense of rhythm to learn the story of the 5 little pumpkins and retell the story with our hands, voices, and stick figure pumpkins. November/December: We will be visiting with Pete the Cat during this time. We will read and sing our way through School Shoes, White Shoes, Groovy Buttons and 12 Groovy Days. Each book has a song and we will completing activities related to each book icluding steady beat, color sorting and number sorting. January/February/March: Story time has been going well, and we will continue to ise books to move forward in our rhythm journey. Students will be introduced to their first two rhythms, One and Rest. We will learn how to perform each rhythm and use simple rhytms with to help be characters in a story and retell the stories of “The Wide Mouth Frog”, “Jack and the Beanstalk”, and “Goldilocks and the THree Bears”. April/May: Students will use rhymes to help learn a new rhythm (One-and) and use three rhythms to match with rhymes and tell two stories about rhyming dust bunnies.

Kindergarten/1st grade (Wednesday-Thursday)–September: We have started our year by reviewing steady beat and two rhythms (one and rest). Students will be introduced to a new note (one and) and practice/review with review games to reinforce steady beat and various rhythm patterns with our three rhythms. We will also build patterns as a class using the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom October: Continuing our rhythm study, we will break down words by their syllables and determine which rhythm patterns to use to perform basic spoken rhythms. Students will group words by their rhythm and continue to build new rhythms to practice. They will also add a double one and note which we will be calling “avacado”. If time allows in this busy month we will start a discussion about tempo. November/December: We will continue our study of patterns and note values. Adding and subtracting notes to create patterns that are euqal will be our focus. Also, we will be visiting with Pete the Cat during this time. We will read and sing our way through School Shoes, White Shoes, Groovy Buttons and 12 Groovy Days. Each book has a song and we will completing activities related to each book icluding steady beat, color sorting and number sorting. January/February/March/April: Students will continue to master their rhythms while completing  a series of activities and reviews using the syllables of words to create and sort rhythms. Seasonal activities about holidays and winter fun will have them sorting rhythms and revisiting note values. Students will use rhymes to tell a rhythm story as a class and start to write a rhythm song of their own composition. May/June: Students will then start a review of the new material from this year. We will start with a review of tempo using songs and activities to challenge students about the speeds of each of our three tempos.

2nd Grade (Tuesday & Friday)– September: All students will be involved in a rhythm review to start the school year. One-and One, Half, Dotted Half, O and the corresponding rests will be reviewed through a rhythmic BINGO and some other clapping rhythm games. October: Students will be introduced to Time Signatures this month. This is how we organize all of our music for composing. Students will learn about 4/4, 3/4, and 2/4 Time Signatures and start to compose rhythms while identifying the correct time signatures by using bar lines and double bar lines. November/December: We will be adding notes and rests to our growing list of rhythms and continue to use them to perform rhythms. O-4, Upside Down Hat-4, Dotted Half-3, Half-2, and Hat-2 will be reintroduced and reinforced with some simple math activities and continue to practice them by using the new notes on time signature activities. January/February/March/April: Students will continue to expand their music theory knowledge and start to look into the world of composition. Building on their time signature and note values, students will start to see how it all comes together to start creating rhythm songs. Being unable to sing, at the end of our project, we are hoping to have a “rap” rhythm song personally created by each student on the topic of their own choosing. We will also be making earth day poems that will be set to a certain rhythm as well to perform for the class as part of an Earth Day theme. May/June: Students will begin to review the new materials learned throughout the year. We will start with a review of tempo and move on to a final review of all of the rhythm material we added to our music knowledge base..

3rd Grade (Thursday & Friday):  September/October: Our focus to start the year will be on note reading. Students will be introduced to the Treble Clef and how to label the lines and spaces on the music staff. We will discuss the pneumonic devices “FACE” for the spaces and “Elephants Get Big Dirty Feet” for the lines. Students will use review sheets and games to reinforce this new knowledge as they prepare for the world of recorders. November/December: Students will have a full review of time signatures and basic rhythms to help us organize our music. 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 time signatures and how they relate to playing the recorder as well as organizing songs so we are prepared for our playing adventure in the 2021. Rhythm BINGO and various activities will be used to reinforce their prior knowledge and set them up for success in music. January/February/March: Students will shift their focus to the world of instruments and their families. We will be taking a more in depth look at the four families of instruments and what characteristics are found within each family. What makes a percussion instrument a percussion instrument? Students will learn the three “S’s” to help define percussion. As we continue our instrument study into March, the moment you’ve all been waiting for will arrive as well:—recorders will be introduced. April/May/June: Students will start to play recorders and follow the Recorder Karate Curriculum and earn belts as they pass each song and learn each new level of learning to play. We start with the notes B-A-G, and add E once we arrive at song number 4.

4-6th Grade (4th Wednesday & Friday, 5th Thursday & Friday, 6th Thursday & Friday): September/October/November: Each student will be choosing a musical instrument for the class to take an in depth look into for research. As a class, we will assist with research covering topics of who invented the instrument and specific historical information regarding their chosen instruments. At the end of our research period, those instruments will be transformed into a Google Slide presentation by the student who chose each specific instrument. They will be shared with the class as a final review/project to wrap up our studies. December: Students are finishing their instrument presentations, and they will also begin to choose a focus for their next project…Composers. A fun review of some previous musical concepts using various activities online will round out 2020. January/February/March/April: Each student has chosen a composer they would like to learn more about and present to the class. We aill be researching as a group with guided questions. Once all composers have been studied, each student will present a Google Slide presentation to review the information learned about the life of their chosen composer. This will follow the same format and procedure we used for our instrument research project. May/June: Students will finish presenting their composer research. We will also start a new unit to talk about musicals and the main themes to bring a show together.