SONIA’S NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2009 LATEST NEWS DIARY DATES: WELLINGTON ORCHESTRA - CIRCUS PROMS. This fun concert for all ages is at the Michael Fowler Centre on Sunday 20 September at 4pm. Tickets from Ticketek. Term 3: FAMILY DAY WITH THE NZSO @ TE PAPA Saturday 17 October from 10am. Musical excitement and entertainment for the whole family! Term 4: 10:30 – 11:30: Meet the NZSO, chamber concert 27 Jul-26 Sept 19 Oct-19 Dec 12:00 – 13:00: A Symphonic Fairytale based on Ravel’s Mother Goose 14:00 – 15:00: Percussion Passion concert ZIPPITY ZOO’S MOBILE FARM PETTING ZOO will be the highlight for our end of year celebration. All our families are invited to Woburn Masonic Village, 63 Wai-iti Cres, Woburn on Friday 18 December from 10am—12 noon. Bring a picnic morning tea and / or lunch and spend the morning while our children and the Woburn residents enjoy the farm animals. Adults please note the following; your child will need to wear closed shoes, and for those families whose children have nut allergies, please note that the animal feed may contain traces of nuts. This special end of year celebration is FREE for our Musikgarten families. Mark Friday 18 December from 10am—12 noon in your diary now. End of Year Keyboard Presentation on Sat 19 December at the Kilbirnie Community Centre, 11:00am — 12:30pm Summer Classes are planned for Jan 2010. More information in our next newsletter. WELL DONE CHILDREN! Sophie De Gregorio a Keyboard Year 3 student, invited me to attend her First Holy Communion on Sunday 23 August. I was honoured to attend this very special service and Sophie looked beautiful in her white dress and veil. The church songs were great fun to sing and I was thrilled to meet Sophie’s extended family. Niklas Best a 7 year old boy in Keyboard Year 1 knocked my socks off recently when it was his turn for Keyboard Sharing. Niklas announced he would play Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor! He had heard the opening phrases on his computer and played them by ear for the class. I was so very proud of his outstanding achievement that I phoned Dr Lorna in North Carolina! SONIA’S MUSIKGARTEN PO Box 33 004 PETONE 04 589 5665 www.musikgarten.co.nz “I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato TERM THREE HIGHLIGHTS FAMILY MUSIC FOR TODDLERS Our toddler classes have been enjoying their Dance With Me curriculum. The children have delighted in making the animal sounds for the song I Went to Visit a Farm. The hoops have been so much fun with the singing game Looby Loo and dancing with our scarves has also been very popular. Our Dance With Me curriculum will be completed at the end of Term 4. sang a variety of songs and danced several dances including Ping Pong Samba. We also danced to jazz music and Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. We have worked on ensemble development with the songs Chatter With the Angels and Bones. The children worked with sixteenth note rhythm patterns and minor tonal patterns and located these on their song pages. KEYBOARD YEAR 1 CYCLE OF SEASONS The 3rd term focus has been the Winter season. With the emphases on snow, our pre-schoolers have sung, danced, moved, played musical games and instruments and enjoyed storytelling relating to this season. With Spring well and truly on its way, we are looking forward to listening to and working with the second Sun Catchers CD in the Family Materials. PRE MUSIC MAKERS My Neighbourhood Community has been the theme for our 3rd term. The children have enjoyed singing, playing a variety of instruments and have developed their very first ensemble for the song Horsey Horsey. Moving expressively with scarves, folding an origami house and colouring the Animal Tracks page from their folder have also been highlights. The topic for Term 4 is The Seashore which is always very popular with our Pre Music Maker children. MUSIC MAKERS YEAR 1 For our older children term 3 was a busy time. We learnt to read and write simple triple rhythm patterns, played familiar melodic motifs on the resonator bars, introduced the woodwind instruments: oboe, clarinet and bassoon, and worked on ensemble development with the song Little Ducky Duddle. Dancing to Bella Bimba kept us warm! MUSIC MAKERS YEAR 2 African American music was the focus this term. The children learnt a hand clapping pattern for Mary Mack, On their pathway to musical literacy, this term our Keyboard children learnt to improvise vocally and take dictation. We continued to sing, drum, dance, compose, identify mystery songs, and play songs and harmonies on the keyboard. The children also learnt to play songs out of the five finger position by crossing over or under. Keyboard sharing remains one of the class highlights. The children can hardly wait to play for each other! KEYBOARD YEAR 2 What a busy term it has been! Our children continue to learn songs by ear and they are now proficient at sight singing an unknown piece of music using solfeggio. Scales, arpeggiated chords, improvising, drumming, dancing, sight reading, root position and inverted chords, analysing the harmony of a given piece and dotted rhythms have all been part of our curriculum this term. Our Keyboard 2 children are well on their way to becoming comprehensive musicians. KEYBOARD YEAR 3 This has been a particularly busy time for Sophie De Gregorio, our only Keyboard Year 3 student. This year Sophie has learnt numerous songs by ear. Her ability to sight sing an unknown piece of music is the key to her playing classical piano music. Sophie can play numerous scales hands together and has begun Hanon exercises. She has composed some beautiful music and is learning to improvise in the Blues style. CONGRATULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS to the following families for their recent births: Lupi and Tevita gave Moala, Angela and Rachel a baby brother named Soipe, Deborah and Marco gave Daniel a baby sister named Jessica, Nisha and Lloyd gave Jai a baby sister who is yet to be named, Elaine and Duncan gave Esther a baby sister named Harriet, Rucelin and Robert gave Regina and Carmel a baby brother named Abilio, Jackie and Steve gave Hugo a baby brother named Theo, Sara and Geoff gave Maatai a baby brother named Manawa and Joanne and Glenn gave Greta and Francesca a baby sister named Isla, Tracey and Todd gave Joseph a baby brother named Thomas. Lena and Khoon gave Emily a baby brother named Andrew, “I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR CHILDREN Our families really appreciate the high quality CDs that form the basis of our Family Materials. One mother commented to me recently that with a family of three children all attending Musikgarten classes, they now have a collection of many Musikgarten CDs and what she appreciates is their timelessness. Even though her youngest is now 4 years old, she told me “We still play the Babies CDs and the music has not dated.” To anyone who has listened to a Musikgarten CD, the quality and timelessness is certainly obvious. However, I am asked by our parents to recommend classical music to add to their children’s CD collections. With Christmas fast approaching, here are my recommendations. Please note that this list is by no means exhaustive and is just a starting point. Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. A story about Peter, who with the help of a few animal friends, captures the wolf terrorising the woods surrounding his Russian farmhouse. It is an excellent introduction to the timbre qualities of several different instruments in the traditional orchestra. Peter is characterised by the violins, the cat by the clarinet, the duck by the oboe and the pompous, bumbling lower registers of the bassoon illustrate the grandfather. The horns, traditionally associated with hunting parties, indicate the hunters, and finally, the wolf is treated by the lower, menacing registers of the brass instruments. Benjamin Britten’s The Yong Person’s Guide to the Orchestra was composed to take children on a tour of the orchestra, exploring the sounds of each major section and introducing how the different families of instruments work together to create a full ensemble texture. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty are perfect for children as they each tell a story. I also recommend; Bizet’s Children’s Games, Debussy’s Children’s Corner Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Leopold Mozart’s The Toy Symphony Poulenc’s Babar the Elephant, Prokofiev’s Cinderella Suite, Ravel’s Mother Goose, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Christmas Eve, Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood, Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young Classical music CDs are generally quite cheap to purchase. You may need to shop around and you may have to place an order as the demand for these CDs isn’t great and many stores carry limited stock. Saint-Saen's Carnival of the Animals has musical depictions of many animals including lions, swans, elephants and even fossils! DID YOU KNOW? DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPORIATE MUSIC activities involve the whole child; the child’s desire for language, the body’s urge to move, the brain’s attention to patterns, the ear’s lead in initiating communication, the voice’s response to sounds, as well as the hand-eye coordination associated with playing musical instruments. MUSIC ENGAGES THE BRAIN and stimulates neural pathways associated with higher forms of intelligence such as abstract thinking, empathy and mathematics. INSTRUMENTAL PLAY is included in all of our Musikgarten classes and it’s fun! This is the time for getting to know the feel and the sound of simple rhythm instruments as we experiment with different ways to play them. GOOD LISTENING SKILLS achievement go hand in hand. MUSIC IS PERFECTLY DESIGNED for training children’s listening skills. AND SCHOOL MUSIC IS A CREATIVE experience which volves expression of feelings. “I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato in- SNIPPETS THANK YOU for sharing with me the way your family expresses and enjoys music making. The following special moments are what it’s all about. One family with their son in Cycles and their daughter in Keyboard Year 1, have 2 drums in the back seat of the car at all times. While Mum is driving, the children sing and drum along happily. A boy from our Toddler’s class told his Mum that she wasn’t doing a Musikgarten activity correctly at home. “Not like that Mum,” he said. Isn’t it amazing just how much the children remember from their 30 minute, once a week Toddler class? Recently one of our boys who has completed Babies class and is now in Toddlers was invited to his cousins birthday party at Lollipops. To his mother’s surprise, he preferred to hammer away on the piano in the corner instead of playing on the jungle gym or bouncy castle. One of our Music Maker 2 girls was really enjoying listening to her father playing the ukulele recently. She picked up a pair of maracas and to the family’s delight started playing them in time with her father’s song. One of our men in an Adult Keyboard class walked for 45 minutes to get to his class rather than miss out on a lesson when his car was in for repairs. This snippet really brought a smile to my face… During the 3rd term our Cycles class had a couple of classes based around snow and making a snowman. When one of our Cycles boys went to Turoa for the weekend, he insisted that he make a snowman. He made two snowballs and placed one on top of the other. With help from his mother, he poked eyes for the snowman with her ski poles and also used a ski pole to make the snowman’s smile. A rock was found for the snowman’s nose, and then our 3 year old insisted that a photo was taken of him with his snowman for Miss Sonia. Please keep the snippets coming in. I really enjoy hearing from you. You can email your snippets to [email protected] or phone me on 04 589 5665. ENROLMENTS FOR TERM 4, 2009 To ensure that your child receives individual attention and recognition during class, Sonia’s Musikgarten classes are limited to 10 children and their adult. Enrolment remains strictly on a first come basis and early re-enrolment of your child/children will avoid disappointment. If the enrolment form and materials fee for your child is not received, that space will be allocated to the next child on the waiting list. Please take a few minutes now to look through the class schedule, fill in the enrolment form, attach your materials fee and hand to your teacher at your next class, or post to: Sonia’s Musikgarten PO Box 33 004 PETONE MOVING ON UP! Term 3 saw many changes as the following children moved on up to their next Musikgarten class. Frampton, Ruan Smith and Ruby Quillan for moving on up from Toddlers to Cycles. CONGRATULATIONS Blake Weller-Chew, Elsa Tait, Lily Morris, Mina Scheid, Rohan Vallabh, Steven DalyKing and William de Veirman for moving up from Babies to Toddlers. CONGRATULATIONS Caoimhe Finn-Burke, Daniel Ewers, Honey Bradford, Milly Symons, Nikita Parag, and Regina Fernandes for moving on up from Cycles to Pre Music Makers. CONGRATULATIONS Katrina Schaff-Ede for moving on up from Babies to German class. CONGRATULATIONS Poppy Paterson-Boock for moving on up from Cycles to Music Makers 1. CONGRATULATIONS Cara Truell, Cordelia Waldron, Eddie Biss, Elsie Beaglehole, Elisabeth Te Puni, Francesca Roberts, Keeran Naguleswaran, Liam CONGRATULATIONS Noah Houghton for moving on up from Music Makers 1 to Music Makers 2. “I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato