Welcome to fourth grade! We have a very busy year planned.  We will continue to learn to read music this year by playing recorders.  Students will be playing recorders during the months of November, February and March.  There may be an additional day at the beginning or end of each of those months.  We will learn to play many songs on the recorders.  Some of those are "Hot Cross Buns", "Doggie, Doggie" and "Little Tommy Tiddlemouse".  Students will also compose some music on their recorders.  We will also continue to use the boomwhackers and Orff instruments to learn about music. We will also work on learning the technical names of notes and other musical symbols and what those symbols mean.

We will finish the Rhythm Band curriculum that we started in first grade. 

Some of the songs that we will sing this year are: "Ama-lama", "I Am Slowly Going Crazy", "The Music Hammer Song" and "The Music Dice Song"They will read music for ostinatos on the Orff instruments to play with some of these songs. 
We will continue the work that we did last year with identifying musical instruments.  Students should know the names of many instruments of the orchestra either when shown a picture of the instrument or by listening to that instrument. 

We will also be exposed to more classical music this year.  Students should be able to identify eight pieces of music by the end of the year.  These are: "The William Tell Overture", ""Air on a G String", Russian Sailor's Dance", "Little Train of the Capaira", "Sabre Dance", "Morning", "The Comedians" and "Stars and Stripes Forever." Hopefully, we will also review the pieces that we learned last year.

We hope to have a great year and watch students continue to work toward becoming great musicians.