From the Archives- Guest Post by Ken McQueen, Music Teacher!

July 10, 2012

Hello everyone!

I must admit that I was excited to do the music class on Saturday, but I didn’t know what an amazing time we would have.  After we started by getting to know each other, we talked about our favorite band and instruments.  We came up with a lot of different styles of music and used movements to match sounds that instruments make and we even did some really cool beatboxing.  Both students sang some of their favorite songs.  We had some great singers.

Playing rhythm games with the group

Playing the electric guitar with Nicky

Talking with the group about types of instruments

This is what songs can be about and what kinds of instruments you can use!

The best part of the day was that we wrote our own original song.  We decided to use the 4th of July as our theme.  We talked about different things that everyone did that day.  Then we talked about things we ate and of course, fireworks.  Once we established the first verse, we moved on to the chorus which was, ‘we were free, free, free to do whatever we want’.  It was perfect.  So I sat at the piano and we quickly got a song going.  We made it easily through our verses and chorus.  But we needed a bridge.  One of the students had said that Katy Perry had sung at the fireworks in Manhattan, so we used the theme from one of her songs for the bridge.  It fit perfectly. We decided to call it “Free To Do Whatever We Want (The 4th of July Song)” which was very fitting, since the holiday is about freedom and they loved staying home from school so they could be free!

Hard at work on our original song!

 

Teddy, Nicky and I working on the song

Jenna helping us remember the words

Liz and Emily helping Teddy and I sing

Michelle and Nicky singing along

Teddy and Nicky singing “Free to Do Whatever We Want”

We put our song together and practiced it a few times before we invited in the parents and performed.  It was a smash hit!  It was really fun and the students really got into it.  They drummed on a box for percussion and we all danced and sang.  Huge applause!

Check it out:

The best part is that we wrote and performed the song from start to finish in 30 minutes.  That was pretty cool.  But it was really all of the great inspiration that the students brought that made it happen.  I was so impressed by the ideas we came up with and the creative flow of our class.

 

I really look forward to doing another class soon.  It’s great working with such a caring group of people and the students are really creative and love music.  I was a great way to spend an afternoon.

If you weren’t following during class, you can relive all of the updates, directly from the classroom on twitter @Daytime_Moon and on facebook http://www.facebook.com/DaytimeMoonCreations. But the most exciting of all is all of the video clips, including the highlight reel of the full class–so subscribe to our channel on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/DaytimeMoonCreations to see all the footage!

 

Ken