Our Inquiry into Music

We have kick started this term with our inquiry into music and the deep understandings that we are aiming to uncover are:

1. My imagination can create worlds and solve problems
2. I can use my imagination to communicate emotions, feelings and ideas
3. I can build on ideas to create new ideas
4. Art and creativity brings communities together
5. Music is made from lots of different sounds (sources)
6. I can challenge myself with new learning (connected to I am a goal setter criteria)

Some of our key questions, to help us uncover this thinking, are:

• What is music and how is it made?
• How can you make sound?
• Who are the arts (music, dance, drama, visual art) for?
• What is the purpose of music and performance (the performing arts)?
• What can we use our imagination for? How can we express our imagination?
• How can we innovate on other people’s ideas to express our own?

This week already we have jumped in head first trying to wrap our brains around what music is, how it's made and how different sounds are made.

We have been experimenting with different materials and trying to make sound and think about how we use those materials to make sound. Some of our made up instruments we have to shake, others we rub and others we strike.

  

We experimented with these materials and made instruments.          

Even though we used the same materials one instrument had to be struck and the other spun.  Here we are writing about our instruments.

  

We explored sounds by playing the jars with different amounts of water in them.  We listened to the way they sounded.  Then we painted our own songs and had a go at playing them.  

Then we started talking about the difference between just making sound and music.  Here were some of our first thoughts.  It will be interesting to see if after some more learning about music we have different ideas.  

Many children were talking about noise being loud and music being soft, so we began to look at the dynamics of music and began to realise that music could be played in different volumes.  We put on our conductor hats and listened to Invercargill March trying to notice 2 things: the beat and the dynamics.  We raised our conductor wands high when the music was loud and low when it was soft.  

We noticed that in this song that changed a lot and that there was a strong beat of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

So then we marched around the room keeping to the beat!

Stay tuned for lots more around our inquiry into music!

Tomorrow is our first drumming session and we are excited!