I’ve been “taking” my younger JLPS students to (online) concerts and discussing what might be happening on stage, off stage, and in the audience. This Kindergarten student was fascinated by the (purple) button that controlled the smoke machines.

Chrome Music Lab

Students in online school are getting tech-ier by the hour. In 2020 I shared Chrome Music Lab with my Junior students. In 2021 my Kindergartens picked it up and now my juniors are composing with SoundTrap. I introduce the programs and ask the students to show me what they discover. Then I listen and learn.

We’re learning online and we’re staying safe. Three things I do enjoy about teaching online: I can see my students’ smiles – some I’ve never seen before because we met masked! We can sing “together” – there’s no singing in school buildings during COVID times. AND when I sing a story to little ones, an old familiar one like “Puff The Magic Dragon,” my students’ faces look calm and mesmerized, like they always do.

Above is a picture of one of my gr. 7 students with his aunt, Domanique Grant. He and his sister introduced me to Domanique’s music and got us in touch with one another. We started a collaboration. In Music classes all of Jean Lumb PS’s K-gr. 4/5s learned a dance to Domanique’s song “Till We See the Sun” and 3 classes of older students learned to accompany her music on bucket drums, ukuleles, and guitars/violin/violas. We gathered footage, with the help of Mr. Li, and sent our efforts to Domanique and her producer. Here’s the music video we helped to create!

Last week we read a book called “Moses Goes to a Concert” by Isaac Millman – it’s about a deaf boy who feels sound. Then we watched a video where Evelyn Glennie (a famous deaf percussionist) taught us that listening is really just paying close attention. Then we listened to music by Icelandic pianist, Olafur Arnalds, and we quietly listened.

Our first performance of 2020 was a hit! More than 200 K-Gr. 5 students learned about musical form (sections A, B, etc), body percussion, and how to do “the wave” in a choreographed dance to the song “Dance Monkey” while the Gr. 5/6 class accompanied the recording with funky rhythms and stick work on bucket drums. A shout out to my friend, Doug Friesen, for helping with the drum performance and to my many wonderful colleagues who joined in the dance party.

What’s an orchestra? A band. What’s a French Horn? An instrument in that band. How does it make sound? Air viiiibraaates inside. Let’s move on and find MORE INSTRUMENTS!

After watching some good old Stomp videos, JL students explored, banged, and listened to our outdoor soundscape.

This fall’s “sharing music from home,” which occurred after these lessons, was like no other. Young students performed pieces using body percussion, dresses swishing, humming, and lots of dancing/stomping.

Getting clean instruments into kids’ hands is a challenge this year..but I love a good challenge. Rotating units (eg. one class on violins/another on bucket drums/another on ukuleles etc.) with each instrument labeled with the student’s name is working well and will move from the junior/intermediates to the primary/kindergartens later this year. We were lucky to have some violins/violas donated to Jean Lumb this summer. As a violinist myself, I’m rather excited…and it’s contagious!

Amidst Covid chaos, Jean Lumb students and I are composing, exploring routinely sanitized instruments, drumming on our playground, listening/dancing to tunes, and discussing what music is to each of us. These kids fill my heart.