This past Sunday, I was fortunate to be asked to accompany my practicum class on a fieldtrip to Ft.George Park to the BC Rivers Day Music Festival. My class and the school's two Kindergarten classes were invited to sing on stage with the Voices of Nature singers, Holly Artzen and Kevin Wright. Holly and Kevin visited our school earlier in the week to teach these students a few of their songs, and practice "performing". Performing included how to do a very profession bow, (maybe I'll show you it in class!)
The Voices of Nature team travels all around BC teaching, using music as a cross-curricular approach to teaching children about the environment. Subject areas include science, social studies, language arts, fine arts, math and physical education.
The students LOVED it! They were so excited, so engaged, and even those who didn't attend the performance wrote thank you letters to Holly and Kevin expressing to them how much they appreciated learning the music. I am so glad I was able to participate in this event.
This is the link to their homepage: http://www.cycleoflife.ca/index.htm
I highly encourage you to check it out!!
1 comment:
I am glad to hear that the Voices of Nature was such a success. I worked behind the scenes to select the participating schools for this project, but, when it came to showtime I was busy volunteering offsite. What was the most valuable outcome for your students?
I am curious about how this project worked in the schools: how it was integrated before and after the event? How much class time it required in the preceeding week? Did your class have to rehearse on its own, or, did the artists' sessions take care of things? Would you want your class to do this again if it was not a free program? If you couldn't afford the full artists programme, do you think that their cds would achieve the same learning outcomes? Etc.
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