Week 6: Olympic Opera

Hello everyone!
First of all, let me just say that this whole summer has been so much fun – and this week was no exception! We had a great time learning about opera, while celebrating one of my favorite events – the Olympic Games!! We had such a great time competing in musical competitions!
We kicked off the games with a Between the Lines Trivia Relay! The kids did an amazing job remembering facts from all of our lessons!! The first round ended in a tie – which was broken in the final! Team Awesome Opera Stars came out on top – just above Team Crazy Kings/Queens!
We went on to learn about opera – a performance where people sing a story. We let the kids in on the secret of opera – deep breathing! We did a great breathing workout before heading into our second Olympic competition – opera breathing! This competition was incredibly tight – and was followed immediately by the third event of the games – Opera Singing! Each competitor took their turn to sing in their very best opera voice for the judges! It was so tough to call – they were all amazing!
We used our new skills to compete in the fourth event – the team sport of Opera Story Singing! We told the story of Cinderella – one sung sentence at a time! The singing was so beautiful
We took a break from the games to listen to some samples of real opera! We listened to selections from Cinderella and our story of the day, Hänsel und Gretel!
Following the examples of opera, we held our fifth event – the Opera Dance-Off! We danced to “Hexenritt” from the opera Hänsel und Gretel and danced like the Baba Yaga!

After the dance-off, we settled down for story time and read the Brothers Grimm version of Hänsel and Gretel! The kids got their costumes and helped us tell the story!

After the gold medal final in the trivia relay, it was time for the medal ceremony! Each member of the Between the Lines team was awarded their well-earned gold medal, and as they stood atop the podium, the BTL anthem was played!! Each member sang proudly as they showed off their gold medals to the world!

We celebrated the victory with Gingerbread cookies (or, as we learned, “Pfefferkuchen” in German!) Congratulations again to the team and we hope you all have an amazing school year!!

Much love,
Molly

Week #5 – Orchestra!

Hey guys!

I can hardly believe we only have one more week of Between the Lines. Molly and I are going to miss y’all like crazy!

This week was one of our favorites of the summer – we talked all about orchestras, which Molly and I both love to listen to and play in! Your kids learned that orchestras are big groups of people who play music together. We listened to some awesome orchestra music that made us imagine and feel all kinds of things.

To see first hand how an orchestra works, we decided to make our own – right at BTL! As the kids learned, orchestras are made up of four “sections” (strings, winds, brass, and percussion) and each section is made of of specific instruments. So we also split up into four sections, and assigned ourselves the names of the orchestra sections. Just like a real orchestra, we learned to follow our “conductor” (and we saw just how tricky that can sometimes be!) in a big game of musical “simon says”.

To learn more about the instruments in each section of an orchestra, we read one of our favorite musical books – “Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin!”. Then we got to see some of the instruments in the book up close! We also saw the violin, viola, cello, and harp, among others. We even got to try playing them for ourselves! Check out this picture of our awesome friend Paul showing off his violin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we learned about one piece of orchestra music up close – the Firebird Suite, by Igor Stravinsky. The Firebird Suite is based on a beautiful Russian fairy tale, which we read and acted out together. Check out the pictures! Your kids made some fantastic actors and actresses [:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We listened to the piece as well, and looked at visual artists’ interpretations of the characters and scenes. Then we crafted our own versions of characters from the story out of Model Magic clay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, there was also a Firebird snack to reward us for all our hard work… Molly and I made “Firebird Tails” out of chocolate-covered Oreo cookies – yum!

To wrap up, as always, here’s the next verse of our song:

Turn on the lights and give an “A” It’s an orchestra – hooray! Winds, percussion, brass and strings Play all sorts of awesome things! Turn on the lights, its time to start! Listen for each special part!

We hope to see you all on Wednesday for our finale lesson! Have a musical week!

Lots of love, Anna [:

Week 4 – Jazz and Improvisation

Hello Friends!

Dancing to John Coltrane!

More dancing

It was so great to see you all again this week. We had SO much fun this week learning all about jazz and improvisation. We began by reviewing, of course, and learned how to do the waltz just like Cinderella and the Prince! Anna and I were very impressed by everyone’s waltzing skills! As it was a very busy lesson, we jumped right into it and introduced jazz. We talked about how jazz was created when a bunch of people from all over the world (living in the American South) brought the music of their countries together to create jazz! We all tried singing our favorite songs at the same time to get an idea of how it all came together. We used words like “messy,” “crazy,” and “one-of-a-kind” to describe our song.

Making up stories by improvising!

We continued to learn by listening to some John Coltrane music and using more words (smooth, dancy, yellow, rolly, shiny, and weird – to name a few) that we thought of while listening. After that, we learned a new word and concept – improvisation! This means to make it up as you go along! We practiced improvising by making up stories, one sentence at a time!

Learning to scat with Louis Armstrong!

After learning what improvisation was, we had one more big part of jazz to cover – scat! Scat, we learned, is a type of “jazz language” that is just a bunch of made up words that people sing! We read, “When Louis Armstrong Taught Me to Scat” and got to meet Louis Armstrong! We practiced scatting all together, before creating our very own scat poetry collages.

As always, no lesson is complete without themed treats! This week, since we talked about breaking musical rules, we broke baking rules and make cupcakes inside of ice cream cones! They seemed to be a big hit

Can’t wait to see you next week!

Molly

Enjoying the cupcake cones

Week #3 – Music is Art!

Hey Everyone!

Hope y’all had a great 4th of July (and week off from BTL!). We certainly missed you! But to make up for it, we had an extra action-packed lesson today. We covered some tricky concepts, but your kids were totally up for the challange.

Today’s theme was “Music as a Form of Art”. So far at BTL, we’ve talked a lot about the elements of music – rhythm, melody, and harmony – but not a whole bunch about what happens when you put these things together. We learned today that music is a lot more than just the sum of its parts. It can do things like tell a story, paint a picture in our imaginations, and express our personal feelings!

We used a few different activities to get the hang of this idea. First, we listened to some famous pieces of classical music, like Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee, and Saint-Saen’s Carvinval of the Animals. We looked at pictures that were inspired by the same kinds of imagery (or pictures and ideas!) as the music, and started to think about how artists can express themselves in different ways. Even more importantly, we thought about how the pieces of art made US feel.

Then we poured those thoughts into some artwork of our own! To get us started Molly told an awesome rendition of the classic story, Cinderella. Then we listened to one of my all time favorite pieces of classical music - Prokofiev’s famous Cinerella Suite. We followed along as Prokofiev’s told the story again, but this time through using our three musical elements – melody, harmony, and rhythm. While we listened, we drew a big, beautiful collage picture, expressing how the music and its story made us feel. Be sure to check it out next week – we’ll have it on display in the BTL room for everyone to see!

busy little artists at work [:

 

Of course, there were also some snacks involved, but this time they were also an activity of their own. We brought rectangular sugar cookies that were frosted like empty picture frames, and your little musicians drew some masterpieces on them in edible, foodcoloring marker. Take a look for yourselves in the pictures below!

just look at that concentration [:

working on our cookie masterpieces!

looking beautiful, girls!

Finally, here’s the latest verse of the Between the Lines Song. We learn a new verse every week to help us remember the musical concepts we’ve talked about, and we sing it to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle”. If you want, you can sing it at home with your kids, too. Any musician will tell yout that the secret to great music is practice!

“Music’s more than just its parts -
It’s another form of art!
Painting, sculpture, writing too
Express the thoughts of me and you!
Music’s more than just its parts -
We can sing what’s in our hearts!”

That’s all for this week’s post! We had a great time talking about art with you all, and we hope to see you again next Wednesday!

Lots of love,
Anna

Week 2 – Melody & Harmony

Greetings!

We have just completed our second lesson and we are completely thrilled with the program so far. The kids have been completely awesome and we love watching them learn and make connections between our two favorite things – music and literature! After laying the foundation with rhythm last week, we moved on to the other two elements of music this week: melody and harmony.

We talked about melody and defined it as the tune that one sings or plays. When you think about your favorite song, the part that you sing is the melody. To demonstrate this, we all learned “Kumbaya” and sang it together. We learned that the notes (or pitches) that we were singing are the melody! Then, we talked about how harmony supports the sounds in the melody by adding more notes to make the music sound full. All of the kids sang the melody of Kumbaya with Paul and Brynn (our special guests!) while Anna and I sang harmonies. The kids noticed that the song sounded louder and fuller!

We then had a demonstration of some major (happy) and minor (sad) music with melody and harmony by our fabulous musicians. We had Paul (violin), Brynn (cello), Anna (harp), and Molly (viola). It was great for the kids to see our instruments and hear what they all sound like! After the demonstration, we talked about how people put words to music (called lyrics) and create songs that you can sing and read. We read “The Seals on the Bus.”

For our exciting activity this week, the kids all made their very own string instruments, which I hope they will play endlessly for you!! They got to see firsthand how tighter strings have higher sounds and looser strings have lower sounds. They also learned that the sound comes from the vibration of the strings!

 

As always, we love our themed snacks! This week we had cookies in the shapes of the instruments we saw and heard today! Thank you so much for participating in Between the Lines and we hope to see you all again on July 11 at 3:30!

 

~ Molly

Our very first lesson – Rhythm!

Hey there, BTL friends and family!

Anna here, giving you a quick update on lesson #1 (with some adorable pictures, of course!) We absolutely LOVED meeting your kids today! We couldn’t have asked for a better start to a fantastic, creative summer together.

Let’s talk about some of the things we did today, shall we? After introductions (and hearing about everyone’s favorite books and songs!) we started our first conversation about music, focusing on our topic of the day – rhythm. Your kids learned that each and every one of them has rhythm inside of them all the time – in the beat of their hearts, and in the unique ways they walk and move. We also discovered some rhythms in nature!

Of course, we eventually made it all the way to our two FAVORITE things in Between the Lines – rhythm in music and in language. Luckily, Molly and I have some great, musical friends who let us borrow enough percussion instruments to create our very own rhythm circle. Everyone tried out the different drums, maracas, tambourines, and bells (the cowbells were a big hit, especially!). We practiced 4-beat rythms, tried free-styling a bit, and sang some of our favorite songs together! Look at your little musicians go!

sharing all the cool instruments!

rocking out to “twinkle, twinkle” [:

 

And then it was time to tie in some literature! And what could be better to demonstrate rhythm in langauge than good old poetry? We read Jack Prelutsky (Molly’s favorite!) and clapped out the rhythms in limericks and haiku. We even wrote our own haikus! If you weren’t in the room for our poetry-reading, make sure to ask your kids to show you their masterpieces!

brainstorming haikus and counting our syllables!

No good lesson would be complete without snacks, of course! Our chocolate-covered-pretzel mallets were a whole lot tastier than the rubber and wooden ones we were using in rhythm circle!

Thanks so much for bringing your kids over to the library today. We had a blast, and hope to see you all again next week!

Lots of love,

Anna [:

Welcome to Between the Lines!

Hello!

This wordpress blog will serve to keep you (parents) updated on the fun activities that your children are doing during our program. Every week we will post pictures, videos, and descriptions of what we learned and how we learned it! In our first post (here) we would like to provide you with some information on who we are and what our goals are for this program!

I’m Molly! I am currently a junior at the University of Pittsburgh studying Communication Science/Disorders and German Language. When I’m not studying, you’ll find me playing viola in the University Orchestra or camping out in a practice room! During the summer I teach violin, viola, and cello through the Timberlane School District and work as a paraprofessional in an ASD program. Last summer I provided adaptive music every week to students with intensive needs. I love working with kids and have a great passion for teaching!! I can’t wait to see what magical things your kids will create in this program!!

 

 

Hi, I’m Anna! I’m a junior in high school and a student at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. I play my harp pretty much everywhere that I can – recently, I’ve soloed with the New Hampshire Philharmonic, Lowell Philharmonic, and the Merrimack Valley Symphony. I can also be heard on NPR’s Radio Program “From the Top”. Last year, I participated in From the Top’s Arts Leadership Certification Program, through which I developed a music education program at an elementary school in Mattapan, Boston. Through that experience, I realized how rewarding and powerful music can be when I bring it out of the concert hall and into the community. I’m so excited to share my love of music and storytelling with your kids – and hopefully inspire them to share their passions as well! [:

Our goals for Between the Lines are that your kids will gain:

• familiarity with the elements of music: melody, harmony, and rhythm
• understanding of the ties between music and literature: specifically storytelling, personal expression, meter, aural tradition, consonance, and dissonance
• hands on music-making experience
• skills in working together, listening, and coordinating as an “ensemble”
• opportunities for self-expression and personal creative growth

We are so excited to get this program rolling and are hopeful that your kids will enjoy the time they have to make music together! Check this page for updates in the coming weeks

Sincerely,

Molly and Anna