Week of November 18

Welcome to HCA Joyful Music

Featuring our Nursery and Pre-K music makers

As Thanksgiving approaches, we are continuing with our themes of gratitude, creation, turkeys and food in our music classes.   We have been singing songs and playing musical games with these themes.  We have even been singing and signing to a creation song the children are learning. 

Music is like language. The more a child is exposed to language, the more fluent they become. So too with music, the more children are immersed in an environment with music the more they will express themselves musically.  Our Pre-K students are able to sing with a sustained singing voice and most are able to follow the contour of the melody as they sing.  Our many of Nursery 2 and 3 students are learning to use their singing voices and discovering how enjoyable music can be. 

In the videos below, two of our Nursery 2 students, Dmitri and Max, are discovering their singing voices.  As the class sang The Turkey Is a Funny Bird, the teacher would toss Tom Turkey to a student and he or she finished our song with a solo, "Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!"

Our Pre-K students have been working on the song I Am Thankful and discussing things for which they are thankful. Check out the video below.

May you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving holiday. 

Nursery parents, please sing the chorus of Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas at home with your children. They will be singing these songs for our Christmas show. The more familiar they are with the songs, the more comfortable they will be singing on stage.  

Week of November 4

Welcome to HCA Joyful Music

Featuring our Nursery and Pre-K music makers

In our early childhood music classes, the month of November brings songs and games about Thanksgiving with themes of gratitude, God's creation, turkeys and of course food.  We will also begin preparing for our Christmas Pageant on December 18.  This week our Pre-K students were excited to learn that they will be featured in the Christmas Pageant as our angels.  The Pre-K have been introduced to the song they will sing entitled More Than a Baby.  We will begin working on the song next week.  Not to be outdone, our Nursery students will kick off our Christmas celebration by opening the show with Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.  

Simple Gifts is a Shaker hymn from the nineteenth century.  Twentieth century American composer Aaron Copland used this familiar melody as a theme in his ballet Appalachian Spring.  This week the children had fun using the canopy scarf to move to this beautiful piece of music.  For some reason, this song always make me think of Thanksgiving.

The Pre-K students enjoyed singing The Turkey Is a Funny Bird while passing Tom Turkey around the circle.  The student holding the turkey at the end of the song got to sing the "gobble, gobble, gobble "as a solo for the class.

Both our Nursery and Pre-K students enjoyed a patriotic play along in honor of Veterans Day.  They marched and played along to John Philips Sousa's  El Capitan.