OUT TAKES !

So we take lots of video that never gets on our Blog... Here is some video of our recording of "If I Had A Hammer" Enjoy!

Sax-a-straws

In our class we learn lots of music and also make musical instruments. We have three requirements... 1) can be made by a kid, 2) are made to last and, 3) made out of free stuff (mostly).

So our project on this day was to make sax-a-straws. All of the kids were able to make then and play them. Very cool. Enjoy our little Sax-a-Straw concert!

Binding Songbooks

For the past couple of weeks Yun-Yun have been making Songbooks with our kids. These are not just any old songbooks. Our kids are binding the books. They start by designing the covers, each one unique. Then they sew the binding. Really, they are binding these books with needle and thread. Then they finish them off with a colored tape binding. Over the next few weeks they will be adding words and art to the books, choosing their favorite songs. Today we get to see a little of the process of making the books. Watch how attentive they are to the binding process. Amazing!

Evan playing the Banjolele and singing Matilda

Today the kids got to play the Banjolele (a multicultural instrument of american banjo and Hawaiian ukulele). We will post more of this exciting day but for now you get to experience Evan playing our favorite Matilda the Gorilla for you. This boy can rock!

How to Play the Uke with the BAM folk music class

This past week we had a chance to play the Uke in our class. We also began working on our new musical instrument project the "ZooLoo Stick"... Enjoy!

Hand in Hand !

So it has been awhile but here is a video that our Winter First Grade "Folk Music Class" did.
This is a song call Hand in Hand. I was with a group recently where we talked about Hands. We talked about our experience of Hands that help and also Hands that hurt. I am sure you can think of times of experiencing both helping and hurting hands. Part of what we do in our class is to teach our students about the power of music to teach life lessons. In writing our verses for Hand in Hand we celebrated hands that help and how in joining hands we can do even more! Enjoy

Winner Folk Music "The Eggplant" Song

This is huge... for the 4 week session of BAM folk music class this past January we worked on making our own Rain Sticks. We learned about rain sticks and how they were used to bring on "the rain" in native cultures. We painted and glued and tied and filled our rain sticks. You can see they are very cool and very unique! At the same time we practiced singing the Norman Greenbaum's "The Eggplant that ate Chicago." Now we get to see it all put together in a wonderful, joyful, playful production. Thanks for all the help of my co-creator, Yun-Yun Cai, aka the "Yakster" Enjoy!