Intro to Medieval music! (January 9th)

Today in Mrs. Pruyt's class we got started on our final project: a performance of Medieval/Renaissance music in a school assembly on March 26th. (This is in conjunction with their social studies unit.) I wanted to give the students an introduction to music from that time period to get them excited for the project. As I was preparing, I found a wonderful website that has a large list of various Medieval instruments which, when clicked on, gives a little description of the instruments as well as a sound sample. It was perfect!

 http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html

The kids had so much fun taking turns picking which instrument we would see and hear next. Some had really funny names or sounded silly. Many were similar to modern instruments. I compared these instruments to "homophones", something they have been studying in grammar. I would ask them which modern instrument is a "homophone" to this Medieval instrument. It was such a fun activity.

The next activity we did was to begin the song we are going to sing, "Give to Me Your Hand". I taught them solfege syllables, and using these with accompanying hand signs, we learned the melody together. It was a little more difficult for them to grasp the melody than I had anticipated, so next time I'm going to try teaching the words with the melody first instead of the solfege syllables. Dr. May, my mentor, was able to come and observe. She gave lots of good advice about how to include body movement with singing: beating rhythm in various ways, dancing, and hand motions. I am excited to try this!