Drums Can Speak to Us (2019-2020)
Our music budget had been cut drastically over the years, thereby making it necessary to find other means of financing needed purchases. My music students are always excited about coming to music knowing that not only will they be singing; but also engaged in playing a variety of classroom instruments: recorders, autoharps, classroom percussion, Orff Instrumentarium of xylophones, metalophones and glockenspiels. I try to give them many opportunities for hands on classroom performances as well as puppetry and movement with props. I have my own music room at Sunny Sands where the students attend music classes on a weekly schedule. They learn how to understand rhythmic patterns, melody notation, musical concepts of pitch, dynamics, tempo, expression. They learn about geography, history, math, rhyming, score reading through song material. I help to reinforce their academics as well as to nurture their creative and expressive selves. Music is the bridge between right and left brain; it is truly a comprehensive means of learning.