Sound Beginnings Overview (age 2-4)
Sound Beginnings prepares students for success in Kindergarten and Let's Play Music! The curriculum is organized into four non-sequential semesters. Each semester is four months long and provides experience with important music concepts and skills through different songs and games. Classes include singing, movement, games stories, and activities, focusing on different concepts each semester including ABC's, letter sounds, sign language, solfeg, singing in tune, counting, shape recognition, colors, and so much more!
Click on the demonstration video below:
Let's Play Music Overview (age 4 1/2 - 5 1/2)
This innovative curriculum will lead your child (entry age 4-6) from very basic music introduction using singing, and simple instruments through a three year program.
The curriculum is organized into three sequential years. The first year, we use engaging games and songs and incorporate Tone Bells to teach staff awareness and rhythm reading skills. The second year, we transfer these skills to playing the piano where we also learn chord notation, intervals, and harmonic improvisation. By the end of the third year, students are playing piano at an intermediate level, transposing music, composing their own music, sight-reading music, and are prepared to excel in further private piano instruction.
Foundation
In the early part of the 20th century, three educators and composers became known as the specialists in music education reform. The very foundation of the Let’s Play Music curriculum is based upon the philosophies and techniques of Zoltan Kodaly, Emile Jacques-Dalcroze and Carl Orff.
Kodaly:
- Solfeggio syllables and hand signs
- Folksongs and circle games
- Solfeggio ‘patterning’ to aid inner hearing
- The ‘flexible staff’
- Movable DO
Dalcroze:
- Rhythmic understanding through full body movement
- Feel the steady beat first
Orff:
- Use of the body as the first instrument
- Use of percussion instruments
- Use of barred melody instruments (xylophone, glockenspiel)
Year 1: Preparation for Keyboard
Red Balloon: Students are introduced to the 5 lines and spaces of the staff, sing the major scale on solfeggio syllables with hand signs, learn to keep a steady beat, match pitch using a minor 3rd, play melodies and ostinati on tone bells, learn the three primary chords on the autoharp, and much more!
Blue Bugs: Students learn to divide and subdivide beats, read rhythmic notation patterns, distinguish major and minor tonalities, play steps and skips from the staff onto tone bells, and much more!
Year 2: Introduction to Keyboard
Green Turtle Shells: Students are introduced to the keyboard, learn C position, middle C, identify and play intervals of 2nd, 3rd and 4th, play primary cadences on keyboard, accompany themselves on the keyboard, and much more!
Yellow Arrows: Students play keyboard in contrary motion, learn the major scale, sing in harmony, learn more complex rhythmic notations, learn more note names on the staff, learn the names of the white keys on the keyboard, and much more!
Year 3: Piano Skills
Purple Magic: Students learn all note names on the staff, identify accidentals, are introduced to transposing, play level 1 piano repertoire, learn about key signatures, ABA song form and much more!
Orange Roots: Students learn to build and identify a triad, find the root in a triad, and invert triads. They learn ¾ and 4/4 time signatures, more rhythmic notation and adding a chord to a melody, melodic dictation, compose their own piece to perform at a recital and much more!
