Rina reached another landmark, entering the universe of long and short sounds. She drew on a collection of black and white cardboard circles that came nicely packaged with Tales of a Musical Journey, and embarked upon a hands-on rhythm framed adventure.
After floating through her “Harmony of the Angels” relaxation opener, she perched herself at the piano and practiced recognition of C, D, E, and F.
Rina surprised me at her lesson today by playing two E’s together with both hands, spaced by a few octaves. She followed her E tapping, by playing F’s to Rebikov’s “Bear” that I had prerecorded for her on You Tube:
Learning new Note G: Rina drew a line from “G” for Giraffe to the Big 3-Black Key House and inserted the animal inside the white space where it belonged:
She then located G’s across the keyboard, being reminded of her graceful “rainbow” movements between octaves or “neighborhoods.” After listening to the G piece, she tapped to it, starting with her Right Hand alone, then she played G’s with hands together:
After her preliminary note tapping, Rina nicely transitioned to the long and short sounds unit.
These sounds and their duration spring from words, and syllables.
Gorin starts with “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” which we sang and clapped. The awareness of “short and long” sounds flowed naturally from this word-centered activity.
Other lyrics are printed to enlist the child in scanning for long and short syllables, words, etc. Rina put check marks at first in circles where short sound words applied and then colored those in. The white circles were for the long sounds. I then lined up the cardboard circles (both black and white) on the music rack so she could see these notes spring to life in touchable form.
Rina then tapped specifically assigned notes and finger numbers to the rhythm of words as seen on the printed page as for example:
Hap- py Birth- day to you Bl=black circle/short sound W=White circle/long sound
short short long long long long
Bl Bl W W W W
Gorin continues with a rhyme scheme on the following page that is more lengthy but very creative.
For this week Rina will practice tapping various notes in rhythm to lyrics that she learned at today’s lesson.
The last one she tapped was:
Sun is shi- ning bright-ly
short short short short long long
Bl Bl Bl Bl W W
Finally Rina reviewed her C and D pieces.
