Shake you booty!

We had such a lovely day, together with three friends from Buds Class, Anneke, Sofia and Yurika. Their friends were sick today so they joined us for most of the day, doing music, playing some games, listening to story and having snack.We spoke about our maracas which we called ‘shaky things’. When we started making our shakers this morning, we sat together at the table, and spoke about the different things that were displayed. There were colourful plastic beads, pom poms, wooden pieces, buttons, foam and sparkly shapes. There were containers made from plastic which we recycled. These

containers originally contained yoghurt, tofu and other desserts which our teachers washed and kept for us. We spoke about the different sounds that we thought the materials would make, when we placed them inside the containers. We thought that the pom poms would be very soft; the buttons and the wood would make a loud noise and if we mixed the

things together, the sound would be different, once again. We played together while Hisami sang the notes do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. We shook our shakers fast and we shook them slowly. We taped them really well so that all the small materials inside, stayed safely inside the plastic containers. We also touched the materials that we put inside the containers to see whether they were hard or soft. Our Buds Class friends brought along their drums and we made a little

orchestra together with our shakers and their drums.

You can see in the photos, from the expression on our faces, when we were shaking them fast and when we were shaking them gently. We changed our calendar and once we had completed it, we played our shakers once again, together with our friends from Buds Class. They made drums and ‘trumpets’ today. When we arrived at school we had a selection of musical instruments on one of our small white tables. We had a drum made from real cowhide, like taiko drums; maracas made from painted wood with different materials inside them; a circular shaped drum with a drum

stick, bells and a tambourine. We noticed that there are many different kinds of maracas; the difference in the sound depends on what is inside them. Some maracas are made from seed pods. They also have their own natural sound when you shake them.

Hisami had a microphone and some of us had a turn to sing with it. Hisami created a rhythm and we tried to copy it and sing it. Some of us practiced singing do, re, mi, fa, so la, ti , do while holding the

microphone. We sang “I’m looking to see who is ……..” and then we sang good morning in many different languages. We tried to use parts of our body to make sounds with and discovered that we can make music with our hands when we clap them; our hands when we tap our knees; our feet when we stamp them on the floor; our tongues when we click them; our lips when we pop them; our mouths when we blow with them; but when we blink our eyes, you cannot hear anything.

We read a fun story which we have heard before called “The little mouse,

the red, ripe strawberry and the bid hungry bear”. We were curious about the picture of the bears shadow and Michaela said that the bear was not looking at the mouse. We could just see the back of the bear. We spent a short time in the park, playing together with our friends from all three classes and then we came back to Petals Class and ate lunch together with Yuriko, Anneke and Sofia. We love playing with our younger friends because this is how it was for us when we first started school. We had our older friends who were our role models and now we can be role models ourselves. Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel