Kinder and Primary Music Newsletter Report

Thank you to everyone at Goulburn Street Primary School for welcoming me into your community, it has been a pleasure to get to know the wonderful staff and students during Term One. The Kinder and Primary classes have had fewer Music lessons than usual due to school events and public holidays, but we have packed a lot into our time together!

The Kinders have been learning about the routines and expectations in Music, including how to hold percussion instruments and when to start and stop playing. They have also been developing their ability to play in time to the beat, which we have been calling “the heartbeat of the music”. We have explored this through hand-held percussion, body percussion, and action songs.

The beat is an essential element of music, and the 3-6 Primary classes have also started the year with a review of their beat-keeping skills. To do this, we have played the Cup Game, an exciting game in which students must perform a percussive pattern on a cup before passing their cup to the next person in time to the steadily accelerating beat. If someone passes their cup out of time to the beat, we end up with a cup traffic jam and the game ends! We are continuing to focus on beat through a variety of learning experiences such as name chanting games and performing with percussion instruments.