New Year 2020

This coming year 2020-2021 will be none like any we've experienced.  I am so thankful that I get to come to school everyday to work with amazing people and beautiful children.  As for September, I will be focusing on mental health and music mindfulness.  I am so looking forward to helping kids feel amazing.  Follow our journey on Instagram @musicroomsb

 

Marching Bands

I love how 1 instrument brings up some cool connections and leads to some great discussions.  Today we were playing a game that used the snare drum and it reminded us of marching bands.  Canada does not have this as a common tradition although we sometimes see them in parades and in the military.  Some students knew about the marching bands in the USA and that they often play at football games.  Here was an example of what we watched and how the team has to work together and the skills that are needed to accomplish such a cool work of art.

Which also lead to a short discussion on baton twirling which Mrs. Mitchell is going to be teaching at our Thursday project afternoons.  We are sooooo lucky to have her and looking forward to seeing what her group will learn.

Rap Battle

Grade 3/4/5 classes are practicing their beatboxing, rapping, and beat keeping abilities while showing creativity.  Each group chose a nursery rhyme and is working on rapping it to one of the beats below.  They are encourage to create patterns, repeat parts, and add some interesting (and appropriate) movement or melody to their pieces.  We are looking forward to hearing what they come up with.

RAP #1 - haunting, intense, violin, hip hop, slower



RAP #2 - intense, minor, synth, hip hop



RAP #3 - intense, chimes, piano, low voice, slower pace, synth



RAP #4 - bluesy jazz, trumpet, walk down bass



RAP #5 - jazzy vibraphone improv



RAP #6 - island feel, reggae

It's Show Time!

SHOW ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 17 (5:00-6:30, Show at 5:45)

On Wednesday, May 17, Stevenson is celebrating the arts by putting on the first ever, Cirque Du Stevenson!  Doors open at 5:00 p.m. and there will be a number of ‘busking’ venues to stop and see as well as the creativity and beauty of everyone’s art work displayed around the main floor.  At 5:45 p.m. we will be putting on a show in the gym.  Students have been working very hard to get ready for this event.  Dress rehearsal is Wednesday at 1:00 p.m.  All students must be accompanied by a parent/adult for the evening show.

All students will be participating in the final song and have work on display.  In addition, several students have volunteered various talents for the various performances and need to be in attendance.

• ·         Buskers – Grade 4/5 volunteers (Group 1 – 5:00-5:15 / Group 2 – 5:15-5:30)
• ·         Ring Masters – Arsenni, Essence, Denise
• ·         Circus Arts - Grade 4/5 Circus Performers
• ·         Circus Demos – Fedor, Riley, Krystal, Jack
• ·         Kindergarten Dance (Room 7 & 8)
• ·         Tap Dance (Room 5)
• ·         Grade 4/5 Hip Hop Performance (Room 3, 4, & 5)
• ·         All school (K-5) sing and dance to Stand In the Light with special dance by Mrs. Hardy’s Dance Team and Grade 4/5 soloists (Ashley, Aliyah, Asraa, Hannah)

We hope to see you out!  Come join in the fun as we celebrate the arts at Stevenson!

Theatre Shows

Looks like an amazing line-up of shows going on in St. James this spring.  Go and check them out and support the arts!  We have amazing talent here in this division.  

Good luck and congrats to all the cast and crew.

Westwood Collegiate production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat takes place from May 2-6 at 7 p,m. Tickets are available here.

Stand in the Light

Our students have started listening today to our upcoming Music Monday 2017 song.  We will be performing it as a school on Monday, May 1st at our Music Monday assembly and our Celebration of the Arts evening on Wednesday, May 17.

This powerful song has a very important message to us.  Take a listen.  Grade 4/5 students are invited to come audition for the open verse 1, verse 2, and bridge solos on Monday, April 3 at lunch.

Stand in the Light background track

Stand in the Light by Jordan Smith

Songwriting Collaboration

Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Atcheson were working on developing a wacky idea to write a song about Winnipeg with Room 9 in their study of Winnipeg.  Mrs. Lowe and her students developed lists of ideas and facts and grouped them.

 Mrs. Lowe asked if we could somehow take these ideas and make them into a song. As we were thinking about the music and ideas, Mrs. Lowe remembered a song she liked by the band, The Weakerthans, called I Hate Winnipeg.  She played it for me and right away I thought, "Let's write verses for how we LOVE Winnipeg."  Almost immediately I started to pull phrases from the student ideas and wrote several verses.  I figured out the chords and developed a rough track on Garageband.  The next week I brought the song to the kids and they got excited and we started to develop their own verse.  After several attempts to make words fit, we felt it was good and then started to rehearse it to learn all the words.  We also want to add some body percussion and rhythm to the song and we are working on that as well.  Mrs. Lowe and her class also plan to make a video.

Just the other day I pulled a few kids to record a rough copy of the song with their voices.  There were a lot of giggles as they learned about the process of recording.  We have to wear the headphones to hear the music and we can also hear our voices when we speak into the microphone.  We also had to practice not singing too loud or it can distort the sound and make it fuzzy.  Some other things we have to work on are matching our voices, hitting the right notes, and singing in the beat.   We look forward to singing our song live during music listening in May.

We hope you enjoy our song about Winnipeg!

Global Play Day 2017

Official Global Play Day Song

Global School Play Day is an event promoting the importance of unstructured play in schools. Unstructured play helps children develop 21st century skills. Since our music classes are only 30 minutes, there are some very expensive things in our room and we have a smaller space to play in, the loudness can be overwhelming when trying out instruments, but we still managed to play and explore lots of things. Here are some of the things the kids loved to do.

Dancing with ribbons

Handbells

Exploring the piano - always a hit!

How many sounds can a triangle make?

Everyone's always drawn to the percussion!

Music art

Contra-bass bars and finding the beat.

We love music!