SONIA’S LATEST NEWS NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2009

SONIA’S
NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2009
LATEST NEWS
DIARY DATES:
WELLINGTON ORCHESTRA - CIRCUS PROMS. This fun concert for all ages is at
the Michael Fowler Centre on Sunday 20 September at 4pm. Tickets from
Ticketek.
Term 3:
FAMILY DAY WITH THE NZSO @ TE PAPA Saturday 17 October from 10am.
Musical excitement and entertainment for the whole family!
Term 4:
10:30 – 11:30: Meet the NZSO, chamber concert
27 Jul-26 Sept
19 Oct-19 Dec
12:00 – 13:00: A Symphonic Fairytale based on Ravel’s Mother Goose
14:00 – 15:00: Percussion Passion concert
ZIPPITY ZOO’S MOBILE FARM PETTING ZOO will be the highlight for our end of
year celebration. All our families are invited to Woburn Masonic Village,
63 Wai-iti Cres, Woburn on Friday 18 December from 10am—12 noon. Bring a
picnic morning tea and / or lunch and spend the morning while our children and the
Woburn residents enjoy the farm animals. Adults please note the following; your
child will need to wear closed shoes, and for those families whose children have nut
allergies, please note that the animal feed may contain traces of nuts.
This special end of year celebration is FREE for our Musikgarten families.
Mark Friday 18 December from 10am—12 noon in your diary now.
End of Year Keyboard
Presentation on Sat
19 December at the
Kilbirnie Community
Centre, 11:00am —
12:30pm
Summer
Classes
are
planned for Jan 2010.
More information in our
next newsletter.
WELL DONE CHILDREN!
Sophie De Gregorio a Keyboard Year 3 student, invited me to attend her First
Holy Communion on Sunday 23 August. I was honoured to attend this very special
service and Sophie looked beautiful in her white dress and veil. The church songs
were great fun to sing and I was thrilled to meet Sophie’s extended family.
Niklas Best a 7 year old boy in Keyboard Year 1 knocked my socks off recently
when it was his turn for Keyboard Sharing. Niklas announced he would play
Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor! He had heard the opening phrases on his
computer and played them by ear for the class. I was so very proud of his outstanding achievement that I phoned Dr Lorna in North Carolina!
SONIA’S MUSIKGARTEN
PO Box 33 004
PETONE
04 589 5665
www.musikgarten.co.nz
“I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music,
for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato
TERM THREE HIGHLIGHTS
FAMILY MUSIC FOR TODDLERS
Our toddler classes have been enjoying their Dance
With Me curriculum. The children have delighted in
making the animal sounds for the song I Went to Visit
a Farm. The hoops have been so much fun with the
singing game Looby Loo and dancing with our scarves
has also been very popular.
Our Dance With Me
curriculum will be completed at the end of Term 4.
sang a variety of songs and danced several dances
including Ping Pong Samba. We also danced to jazz
music and Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. We have
worked on ensemble development with the songs
Chatter With the Angels and Bones. The children
worked with sixteenth note rhythm patterns and
minor tonal patterns and located these on their song
pages.
KEYBOARD YEAR 1
CYCLE OF SEASONS
The 3rd term focus has been the Winter season. With
the emphases on snow, our pre-schoolers have sung,
danced, moved, played musical games and instruments
and enjoyed storytelling relating to this season. With
Spring well and truly on its way, we are looking
forward to listening to and working with the second
Sun Catchers CD in the Family Materials.
PRE MUSIC MAKERS
My Neighbourhood Community has been the theme for
our 3rd term. The children have enjoyed singing, playing a variety of instruments and have developed their
very first ensemble for the song Horsey Horsey.
Moving expressively with scarves, folding an origami
house and colouring the Animal Tracks page from their
folder have also been highlights. The topic for Term 4
is The Seashore which is always very popular with our
Pre Music Maker children.
MUSIC MAKERS YEAR 1
For our older children term 3 was a busy time. We
learnt to read and write simple triple rhythm patterns,
played familiar melodic motifs on the resonator bars,
introduced the woodwind instruments: oboe, clarinet
and bassoon, and worked on ensemble development
with the song Little Ducky Duddle. Dancing to Bella
Bimba kept us warm!
MUSIC MAKERS YEAR 2
African American music was the focus this term. The
children learnt a hand clapping pattern for Mary Mack,
On their pathway to musical literacy, this term our
Keyboard children learnt to improvise vocally and
take dictation. We continued to sing, drum, dance,
compose, identify mystery songs, and play songs and
harmonies on the keyboard. The children also learnt
to play songs out of the five finger position by crossing over or under. Keyboard sharing remains one of
the class highlights. The children can hardly wait to
play for each other!
KEYBOARD YEAR 2
What a busy term it has been! Our children continue
to learn songs by ear and they are now proficient at
sight singing an unknown piece of music using
solfeggio. Scales, arpeggiated chords, improvising,
drumming, dancing, sight reading, root position and
inverted chords, analysing the harmony of a given
piece and dotted rhythms have all been part of our
curriculum this term. Our Keyboard 2 children are
well on their way to becoming comprehensive
musicians.
KEYBOARD YEAR 3
This has been a particularly busy time for Sophie De
Gregorio, our only Keyboard Year 3 student. This
year Sophie has learnt numerous songs by ear. Her
ability to sight sing an unknown piece of music is the
key to her playing classical piano music. Sophie can
play numerous scales hands together and has begun
Hanon exercises. She has composed some beautiful
music and is learning to improvise in the Blues style.
CONGRATULATIONS
CONGRATULATIONS to the following families for their
recent births:
Lupi and Tevita gave Moala, Angela and Rachel a
baby brother named Soipe,
Deborah and Marco gave Daniel a baby sister named
Jessica,
Nisha and Lloyd gave Jai a baby sister who is yet to
be named,
Elaine and Duncan gave Esther a baby sister named
Harriet,
Rucelin and Robert gave Regina and Carmel a baby
brother named Abilio,
Jackie and Steve gave Hugo a baby brother named
Theo,
Sara and Geoff gave Maatai a baby brother named
Manawa and
Joanne and Glenn gave Greta and Francesca a baby
sister named Isla,
Tracey and Todd gave Joseph
a
baby
brother
named
Thomas.
Lena and Khoon gave Emily a baby brother named
Andrew,
“I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music,
for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato
CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR CHILDREN
Our families really appreciate the high quality
CDs that form the basis of our Family Materials.
One mother commented to me recently that with
a family of three children all attending Musikgarten classes, they now have a collection of many
Musikgarten CDs and what she appreciates is
their timelessness. Even though her youngest is
now 4 years old, she told me “We still play the
Babies CDs and the music has not dated.”
To anyone who has listened to a Musikgarten
CD, the quality and timelessness is certainly
obvious. However, I am asked by our parents to
recommend classical music to add to their
children’s CD collections.
With Christmas fast approaching, here are my
recommendations. Please note that this list is by
no means exhaustive and is just a starting point.
Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. A story
about Peter, who with the help of a few animal
friends, captures the wolf terrorising the woods
surrounding his Russian farmhouse. It is an
excellent introduction to the timbre qualities of
several different instruments in the traditional
orchestra.
Peter is characterised by the violins, the cat by
the clarinet, the duck by the oboe and the
pompous, bumbling lower registers of the
bassoon illustrate the grandfather. The horns,
traditionally associated with hunting parties,
indicate the hunters, and finally, the wolf is
treated by the lower, menacing registers of the
brass instruments.
Benjamin Britten’s The Yong Person’s Guide
to the Orchestra was composed to take
children on a tour of the orchestra, exploring the
sounds of each major section and introducing
how the different families of instruments work
together to create a full ensemble texture.
Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Swan Lake
and Sleeping Beauty are perfect for children as
they each tell a story.
I also recommend;
Bizet’s Children’s Games,
Debussy’s Children’s Corner
Grieg’s Peer Gynt,
Leopold Mozart’s The Toy Symphony
Poulenc’s Babar the Elephant,
Prokofiev’s Cinderella Suite,
Ravel’s Mother Goose,
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Christmas Eve,
Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood,
Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young
Classical music CDs are generally quite cheap to
purchase. You may need to shop around and
you may have to place an order as the demand
for these CDs isn’t great and many stores carry
limited stock.
Saint-Saen's Carnival of the Animals has
musical depictions of many animals including
lions, swans, elephants and even fossils!
DID YOU KNOW?
DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPORIATE MUSIC
activities involve the whole child; the child’s
desire for language, the body’s urge to move,
the brain’s attention to patterns, the ear’s lead in
initiating communication, the voice’s response to
sounds, as well as the hand-eye coordination
associated with playing musical instruments.
MUSIC ENGAGES THE BRAIN and stimulates
neural pathways associated with higher forms of
intelligence such as abstract thinking, empathy
and mathematics.
INSTRUMENTAL PLAY is included in all of our
Musikgarten classes and it’s fun! This is the time
for getting to know the feel and the sound of
simple rhythm instruments as we experiment
with different ways to play them.
GOOD LISTENING SKILLS
achievement go hand in hand.
MUSIC IS PERFECTLY DESIGNED for training
children’s listening skills.
AND
SCHOOL
MUSIC IS A CREATIVE experience which
volves expression of feelings.
“I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music,
for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato
in-
SNIPPETS
THANK YOU for sharing with me the way your family
expresses and enjoys music making. The following
special moments are what it’s all about.
One family with their son in Cycles and their daughter
in Keyboard Year 1, have 2 drums in the back seat of
the car at all times. While Mum is driving, the children
sing and drum along happily.
A boy from our Toddler’s class told his Mum that she
wasn’t doing a Musikgarten activity correctly at home.
“Not like that Mum,” he said. Isn’t it amazing just how
much the children remember from their 30 minute,
once a week Toddler class?
Recently one of our boys who has completed Babies
class and is now in Toddlers was invited to his cousins
birthday party at Lollipops. To his mother’s surprise,
he preferred to hammer away on the piano in the
corner instead of playing on the jungle gym or bouncy
castle.
One of our Music Maker 2 girls was really
enjoying listening to her father playing the
ukulele recently. She picked up a pair of
maracas and to the family’s delight started playing
them in time with her father’s song.
One of our men in an Adult Keyboard class walked for
45 minutes to get to his class rather than miss out on
a lesson when his car was in for repairs.
This snippet really brought a smile to my face…
During the 3rd term our Cycles class had a couple of
classes based around snow and making a snowman.
When one of our Cycles boys went to Turoa for the
weekend, he insisted that he make a snowman. He
made two snowballs and placed one on top of the
other. With help from his mother, he poked eyes for
the snowman with her ski poles and also used a ski
pole to make the snowman’s smile. A rock was found
for the snowman’s nose, and then our 3 year old
insisted that a photo was taken of him with his snowman for Miss Sonia.
Please keep the snippets coming in. I really
enjoy hearing from you. You can email your
snippets to sonia@musikgarten.co.nz or phone
me on 04 589 5665.
ENROLMENTS FOR TERM 4, 2009
To ensure that your child receives individual attention
and recognition during class, Sonia’s Musikgarten
classes are limited to 10 children and their adult.
Enrolment remains strictly on a first come basis
and early re-enrolment of your child/children
will avoid disappointment.
If the enrolment
form and materials fee for your child is not
received, that space will be allocated to the next
child on the waiting list.
Please take a few minutes now to look through the
class schedule, fill in the enrolment form, attach your
materials fee and hand to your teacher at your next
class, or post to:
Sonia’s Musikgarten
PO Box 33 004
PETONE
MOVING ON UP!
Term 3 saw many changes as the following children
moved on up to their next Musikgarten class.
Frampton, Ruan Smith and Ruby Quillan for moving on
up from Toddlers to Cycles.
CONGRATULATIONS Blake Weller-Chew, Elsa Tait,
Lily Morris, Mina Scheid, Rohan Vallabh, Steven DalyKing and William de Veirman for moving up from
Babies to Toddlers.
CONGRATULATIONS Caoimhe Finn-Burke, Daniel
Ewers, Honey Bradford, Milly Symons, Nikita Parag,
and Regina Fernandes for moving on up from Cycles
to Pre Music Makers.
CONGRATULATIONS Katrina Schaff-Ede for moving
on up from Babies to German class.
CONGRATULATIONS Poppy Paterson-Boock for moving on up from Cycles to Music Makers 1.
CONGRATULATIONS Cara Truell, Cordelia Waldron,
Eddie Biss,
Elsie Beaglehole, Elisabeth Te Puni,
Francesca Roberts, Keeran Naguleswaran, Liam
CONGRATULATIONS Noah Houghton for moving on
up from Music Makers 1 to Music Makers 2.
“I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music,
for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning. ” - Plato