Oh No....there's a cry-er

My first few visits into the world of general music have been rather eventful.  My first observation was at a rural elementary school in the middle of nowhere, about 15 minutes from downtown Boone, NC.  Considering how the school was surrounded by beautiful woodland scenery, the school was surprisingly modern - on the outside that is.  As I entered the school, I was greeted by an overly enthusiastic office worker asking my intentions of visiting the school.  After explaining my observation, I got directions through the school to the music room.  I came upon a class just ending, the teacher appearing more than slightly stressed....and it is only 8:45 a.m. 

As the first class leaves, the teacher explains that Friday mornings is first grade, which to me sounds like a never-ending nightmare.  As the next class enters, she has to distract the kids from the mallet instruments in the center of the room.  The teacher explained to the students that music is made up of both steps and leaps and had the students take the best guess on what these terms meant.  The students then learned a rather enjoyable song about a frog jumping around a pond.  The song happened to be a rather step-wise piece, with a nice sol-do leap every time the frog went "ga-lump."  The students sung the song with a number of different variations so that they sung both sections with leaps and steps.  

The students then moved into a circle with mallet instruments and learned about how if you put a lot of steps together, you can make a scale.  They played the C scale over and over to hear how the scale sounded.  Then the students learned another song that was basically a scale over and over again.  It simply reinforced the fact that scales are just made up of a series of steps.  The students loved the silly songs and it was amazing to see how their days were brighter based on the music they sung.  

As with any class of 20+ first graders, there would be students who do not want to cooperate.  There was one kid who wanted to physically jump when he said "gah-lump," which the teacher thought could be dangerous as the class was standing on risers.  The teacher also had to tell students not to play with their mallet instruments when it was not time to play.  However, considering those were only disciplinary problems in a first grade class, I would be praising someone for those glorious kids.  


After a nice leisurely drive back to Appalachian State, my partner and I walked over to the daycare here on campus to view the pre-school class start their day. As we arrived, the kids were having their morning snack, which included milk with cereal.  One girl happened to spill her milk....and started to bawl her eyes out.  She was literally crying over spilt milk.  Let's just say that confirmed my suspicion that young kids are not my teaching forte.  Needless to say, the teachers helped address the issue and eventually got her to settle down, to an extent.  


It was one of the teacher's last day, so the whole class sang a nice little song to him about coming back to visit later.  It was a very nice gesture, considering that the song also came with a sweet hand-made crown.  It was interesting to see how the students interacted with each other, starting to form cliques at such a young age. 


While I would love to stay and chat, it is mid-term season with lesson plans to transcribe, scales to practice, chapters to read, and concerts to go to.  I am looking forward to contributing more to the world of general music......let's hope not too excited. 

 This looks.....delicious.....I haven't eaten in a few days it feels like.

photo from: http://www.easycupcakes.com/frog-cupcakes-with-big-eyes/