From our Music Teacher, Ms. Eleanor Tynan…This year we are focusing on the fundamentals of music, and emphasizing the "fun"! During this year of challenges, the students are exceeding expectations and showing great resilience in the face of so much change. As the older students study music history and famous composers, fourth grade works on building their ukulele skills and creating their own books of chords, with which they will write songs later in the year. K1 is working on developing our sense of pitch by playing with various silly songs, folk songs, and sliding scales. Our lovely Kindergarten students are studying American and international folk songs, while learning to play simple songs on the xylophone, and identify high and low pitches within a song! They love playing the high low game, where they get to jump up and fall to the ground to demonstrate low noises and high sounds. In first and second grade we are working on learning our rhythms! They impress with their ability to internalize a beat, and write their own rhythmic patterns. For a fun change of pace they used their musical notes to create silly pumpkin faces, as seen here. Overall, the children of South Boston Catholic Academy are showing me every day that music and joy cannot be thwarted by quarantines, or pandemics. Their sense of play abounds, and I am blessed to help guide them in their musical journey.