Originally posted on Music (and Science) For Young Children:
(Like young children, cats are enthusiastic and relentless scientists.) For years I’ve used strings (mostly ukulele strings and rubber bands) to help young children explore and understand how pitch (the highness and lowness of sounds) works. I plan to write more on this later, and I’ve shared…
Author Archives: Abby Connors
Originally posted on Music (and Science) For Young Children:
Games for Exploring Timbre For his fourth birthday, Brycen received a rhythm band set. He enjoyed playing with all the instruments, and his mom, Kyleigh, was delighted that he seemed to be musically inclined. Then one day she found him playing with the maracas in a…
Originally posted on Music (and Science) For Young Children:
Recently, a music teacher named Elisabeth Kirby (@JeffersonSings) tweeted that the song “Ghostbusters” uses 3/4 of the vocal timbres: sing, speak and call! (The fourth is whisper.) I admired Ms. Kirby’s observation, and also felt kind of jealous because I’d never noticed this. Also, it somehow…
In 1983, E. Paul Torrance wrote these remarkable words: Manifesto for Children Don’t be afraid to fall in love with something & pursue it with intensity. Know, understand, take pride in, practice, develop, exploit, & enjoy your greatest strengths. Learn to free yourself from the expectations of others and to walk away from the games […]
(Like young children, cats are enthusiastic and relentless scientists.) For years I’ve used strings (mostly ukulele strings and rubber bands) to help young children explore and understand how pitch (the highness and lowness of sounds) works. I plan to write more on this later, and I’ve shared several of these activities in my latest book, “Exploring […]
If your teaching style were a movie genre (don’t worry, this isn’t a Buzzfeed quiz), what would it be? Maybe Comedy? I once knew a trigonometry teacher who somehow combined math with an ongoing stand-up routine – every year he’d dust off his headdress and be Chief Socatowa (Something about sines and cosines? Luckily I […]
What’s on the wall next to the door of your classroom? I mean at a level where your students can see? If the answer is “nothing,” you might want to consider adding some intriguing pictures – artwork or photos of animals, space, plants, other cultures, – anything they may not have seen before that’s beautiful […]