Journal 2

This week in Musc 373, we practiced saying our rhymes to each other in class.  We were learning how to sing our rhyme to the beat in a normal, steady beat rhyme, and also to tap a beat to each syllable of our words.  We also learned specific definitions to words such as steady beat and rhyme.  Then we were learning how to play the recorder, which takes a little while to get used to. This pretty much sums up what we learned this week in class.

I learned quite a bit from these lessons we had.  First of all, being reminded of how it was like as a child doing this, it really helps so that we can relate to our kids a lot more easily.  Second, the definition's we learned I never thought about to such a big extent.  For example, the specific definition of "rhyme" is on a steady beat, it is a combination of short, long, and silent sounds.  Finally, our teacher helped teach us how to play the recorder by having us learn a note 1 step at a time and then used them in a song.  This is how these things were imparted to me.

All of this information is very important to learn for being able to help teach our future students better.  As I said before, learning how to do this from the children's perspective helps us be able to explain more easily.  Next, knowing these specific definitions helps us  know how to explain the definitions to the students.  Learning how to play recorder helps us be able to implement music while learning in the classroom.  This is why it is important to learn all of these things.

It is very important for children to learn this material at such a young age.  To start off with, being able to understand beats and rhythms can be very helpful in more than just music, such as memorization in other subjects possibly.  If they wanted to have a profession in music, getting them interested at an early age is very helpful as well.  Lastly, kids are able to remember a lot of things when they start out young and are able to retain it pretty well, so storing up as much knowledge in them that they can handle at a young age will also greatly effect their futures for the better.  This is why it is important for children to learn these things at such a young age.

The 10 children's song I remember the best are:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Rock a bye Baby

Jingle Bells

Row Row Row your Boat

O Hanukah

Old McDonnell Had a Farm

 This is all I can remember off the top of my head right now.