Students in 2nd Grade had blast exploring and learning all about the Amazon Rainforest before vacation.  We  looked at pictures of the habitat and had fun listening to and creating sounds of nature including rain, thunder, frogs, birds, snakes, jaguars and much more.  

As part of our exploration we learned some new key vocabulary:

Sound Effect: a sound made artificially for use in a play, movie, or other broadcast production such as the sound of a storm or a creaking door.
Soundscape: A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an environment.  It is the voice of a landscape.
Verse: the music stays the same but the words can change
Refrain: the music and the words stay the same each time it occurs in the song

We were able to create our own Amazon Rainforest soundscape using everyday classroom instruments such as hand percussion, congas, bongos, maracas, claves, bird whistles,  guiros and other scrapers, our voices and our bodies and using/playing them in creative ways.  Each student added their own sound effect to the forest soundscape.

After we made our soundtrack we learned to sing two songs in Portuguese. See the music score of these songs below.
"Kibungo" and “O pião entrou" which translates roughly to “The Top Joined the Circle.”  We learned to the dance of the spinning top!  So fun ... and a bit dizzying too!

We heard a folk tale from Brazil called "Kibungo Beast of the Forest" and turned it into our own musical!  The story tells how brain power can be much more powerful than physical strength as Jubute the tortoise tricked Kibungo beast of the forest and saved all of her animal friends by using her ability to think.  The use of story retell greatly supports our 2nd grade minds as it is a critical thinking skill stressed in ELAW curriculum.  What a fabulous way to combine reading literacy with music class!

 We used our soundscape recording to really highlight the setting of our play .  We made impromptu props, scenery and costumes using classroom materials on hand.  We used drums and our new Portuguese songs to help us tell the tale! It was definitely a super fun unit!!!  Below are some pictures and the songs we learned.  Ask your second grader to retell the tale from memory. 

This unit used all art modalities and all of the National Music Standards!  For more information about my music curriculum check out this CURRICULUM link.

On March 29th we celebrated music in Rochester with the 25th annual Music in Our Schools Concert.  The video below is of the combined Chorus (bands join to sing at the end) singing "Sing" by Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber.  "Sing" was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee Celebration in honor of her sixty years as Queen.