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Music

It has been so lovely to have all of the children back at school.

Reception enjoyed their first choral session outside under the lawn tent, where we can safely sing together. They began with an energetic warm-up, where they independently responded to the different rhythms that I played on the Djembe drum, freezing whenever I stopped playing. They also had to respond with set actions to the timbre of different instruments, for example a star jump when they heard the Triangle. We then went on to learn ‘Animal Fair’ which the children picked up very well, and had fun matching some percussion instruments to the different parts of the song.

Across the school we have been exploring pitch this week. The children learnt different tunes to match an instruction, for example ‘stand up’ (sung as a perfect 5th). After some practise, they were able to aurally match the different pitch combinations with the actions without needing to hear the words. It is very impressive to see the children following instructions without needing to even hear the words.

To challenge our listening skills further we played a game called ‘Swampy’. The children could walk across the crocodile infested swamp if they heard a high C played on the chime bar but if they heard the low C (an octave apart) they had to run back to safety of the bank without getting caught by a crocodile!

This week has also seen the start of our new Violin Club, with private lessons beginning online for pupils in Years 1 and 2. The children were very excited to receive their violins and I am really looking forward to hearing their progress throughout the term.