Throughout the Kindergarten year, music class activities will focus largely on developing basic vocal technique, music listening skills, steady beat competency, and a movement vocabulary. Students will experience an extensive repertoire of nursery rhymes and folk songs through enjoyable singing games, movement practices, instrumental accompaniment, and dramatic play. There is also an emphasis on exploring early literacy skills through musical play.
(Compiled from the 1994 MENC/NAfME Content Standards, NYC Arts Blueprint, and the Skills Scope Sequences of Making Music and Share the Music Series)
- Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
-will experience singing solo, in a small group, and with full class
-will experience singing with piano/guitar accompaniment and without
-will sing with close or total accuracy in pitch and rhythm
-will sing with clear diction
-will experience call and response and echo-singing
-will practice vocal exploration with high, low, and middle sounds
-will label/use appropriate speaking, singing, whispering, shouting voices
-will develop repertoire of folk song literature from memory
-will develop repertoire of spoken nursery rhymes from memory
-will experience singing/chanting in various dynamics, tempos, expressive styles, and meters
- Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
-will explore percussion instruments and body percussion for sound effects in stories, rhymes, and songs
-will identify names of percussion instruments used in class
-will demonstrate correct playing techniques of percussion instruments
-will echo rhythmic patterns on instruments and body percussion accurately
-will maintain steady beat on instrument while singing, chanting, or listening
- Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments
-will experience improvising percussion accompaniments to nursery rhymes
- Composing and arranging music within specific guidelines.
-will help create soundscape patterns for stories or rhymes
-will help choose characteristic instrument sounds for animals, story characters, story events, etc.
-will help to compose new verses to familiar folk songs
-will compose their own S-M or high-low songs and 4-beat rhythmic patterns
-will create vocal exploration composition drawings
- Reading and notating music.
-will use iconic notation with S-M (high-low) to read simple four-beat phrases and to notate simple phrases in dictation games (1 line staff)
-will use body solfege S, M, L when singing
-will use standard notation cards of quarter notes, eighth-note pairs, and quarter rest to notate simple four-beat dictation phrases
-will perform simple four-beat phrases on percussion instruments by reading standard notation
-will interpret vocal exploration iconic notation (up/down/same)
-will identify, clap, and notate the rhythm and number of syllables in words with 1 to 4 parts
- Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
-will demonstrate appropriate listening behaviors
-will identify common instruments in listening examples (piano, flute, violin, trumpet, drum)
-will describe the music using loud/soft, fast/slow, and high/low
-will follow age-appropriate listening maps
-will experience many styles of music
-will identify if parts of the music are the same or different
- Evaluating music and music performers.
-will be given the opportunity to express their opinion/thoughts/preferences for music heard in the classroom through discussion
- Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
-will experience literacy in the music classroom through singing books and adding music to books
-will perform songs using expressive movements and voices like when telling a story
-will sing songs about topics they are studying in class such as animals, families, community, school, transportation, weather, etc.
-will help create musical patterns with shapes and colors
- Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
-will learn folk songs and children’s games from various cultures
-will identify how music is used in daily life including all the places they hear music
Additional standards inspired by Dalcroze and Orff-Schulwerk:
- Movement and Dramatic Play:
-will move appropriately to show expressive elements of the music
-will learn to start and stop on the music’s cue
-will be able to find and move to the steady beat using music that has a well-defined and even pulse; move to both fast and slow tempos
-will be able to demonstrate a varied repertoire of non-locomotor and locomotor movement skills including but not limited to: walk, run, hop, march, skip, gallop, sway, glide, jump, twirl, pat, tap, stomp, clap, snap, bend, balance, shake, stretch, etc.
-will demonstrate moving their bodies like animals or storybook characters while acting out a scene
-will demonstrate ability to control their movements inside of their own personal space
-will be able to form and move in a line (follow-the-leader), a circle, and in free space with little assistance
-will use a clear, expressive speaking voice with a variety of dynamics and tone qualities
-will create movements to songs and poems for performances
-will demonstrate ability to pass an object in a circle, down a line, or with a partner
-will demonstrate ability to form their bodies into different shapes and positions according to visual and verbal directions to musical cues
