March 2026: Music

Happy spring from music class! 

Our classes this month are preparing songs from Grandfriends Tea, and we’re looking forward to sharing them with families soon. 

First Grade: 

The First Grade class has reached an important milestone: starting on their pentatonic flutes. Students have practiced hand position on the flutes and played a song with just their thumbs. In January, all the classes sang a Japanese song about snow called “Yuki”.  Here is a video of the First Graders singing it - see if you can guess what it is about from the hand motions!  

Second & Third Grade:

The Second/Third Grade class has been continuing their recorder work this semester. In February, the class had a sweet experience learning two Latvian songs, one about winter (which happened to correspond to the last really cold week!) and a folk dance song that is very springlike; it felt as if our Latvian songs were ushering us from winter into spring. Ki Ieva brought us the songs, the students sang them in both Music and Handwork. Additionally, the students heard Ki Ieva play a kokla, a traditional Latvian instrument. She taught them how to do the folk dance as well, called Tūdaliņ, tāgadiņ; ask your student to show it to you, they did a great job dancing! Here is the Second & Third Grade class playing the winter song, Sidrabiņa lietiņš lija, on their recorders.

Fourth & Fifth Grade:

Fourth/Fifth Grade students have continued expanding their technique on ukulele. The week we learned Sidrabiņa lietiņš lija, this class had a two-fold challenge as we brought it to the ukulele: they learned an arpeggiated, picked accompaniment, which was a new skill for them, and they also developed their aural skills by figuring out by ear (as in no written music) how to play the melody to the song on their ukuleles. We put the two parts together for this performance. Keep in mind, we learn a song per week, so this week, in one music class, they learned to sing the song, and all of this ukulele playing was done in the second class. They continually impress me with how quickly they learn new skills. 

Middle School:

Middle School has been doing some drum and rhythm activities in addition to learning our weekly songs. The class also went on a field trip to see the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra perform. In addition, the students have been working on a group composition project where they work in grade-level groups to compose new music to a picture book. The class will perform these for a kindergarten class in the coming weeks. For a video from this class, here is an example of one of the games played with all the classes. It’s an English folk song called Alley Alley-O that has a sort of dance with it. All the classes have attempted it, but our Middle School is the only group that has successfully gotten themselves all tied up and untied again. 

Warmly, 

Stephanie