The Fledglings have enjoyed a very musical week with our chosen Topic Story I Got The Rhythm influencing our activities and projects.
The role play area has been set up as a Music Shop and it has been incredibly popular amongst the children who have enjoyed playing the instruments together and selling them to customers.
We continued our focus on instruments in Art where the children used the DT resources to create their own instruments. Tissue boxes wrapped with elastic bands became guitars while sealed boxes with beans became shakers which they decorated with colourful tissue paper.
This week we enjoyed our first outdoor excursion which involved taking a coach to Balham Baptist Church where we participated in an Orchestral Workshop, learning about instruments in the woodwind, string and brass families. We experienced a selection of live classical music performances including pieces composed by Mozart, Pachelbel, Ravel and Purcel.
During the workshop the children had the opportunity to hear music played by the flute, the oboe, the violin, the trombone, the tuba and the cornet. The instruments were brought close to the children so they could see the details of each instrument and we were able to take turns to feel the vibrations of the low sounds made by the tuba.
We also learnt about conducting an orchestra and how to move our arm to guide the beat and rhythm to the count of three. Collectively and led by the musicians we began to increase the speed of the rhythm and the children were encouraged to get up and clap and dance with the music.
We also watched a short video of a full Orchestra playing and studied the conductor as he led them. We were able to request songs familiar to the children and The Orchestra played ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’, ‘Ten Green Bottles’, ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ which we sang along to!
During the week we also spent some time discussing Remembrance Day and the children created paper poppies which we will combine with the Chicks' poppy art to create a wreath to display on our Cultural Capital board.
The rest of the week was filled with our usual activities including Music sessions where we have begun our Nativity rehearsals, Sports sessions and our Outdoor Learning Day. In the classroom we have enjoyed a selection of Literacy and Maths focused activities including creating and comparing lengths using the Unifix cubes, fishing for Phonics, finding hidden letters in the Kinetic Sand and exploring the interactive phonics sound board during One to One time.