After having Thanksgiving Break extended by a day and a half due to inclement weather, the students returned to school late this morning. It has been over ten days since I have seen them and it was time to jump right back into Holiday Concert preparation.
Pitch Explorations
If you use Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps in Music approach, then you know that the first step in his 8-step workout is for the students to perform pitch explorations. Pitch explorations are vocal warmups that help your young students to sing in their head voices. With my young students, these work so well. I continued this year to use them with my older students as they loved them and it helps them to sing in their head voices.
Feierabend Fundamentals Facebook Page
On the Feierabend Fundamentals Page, Persephone Marien posted a picture of her pitch exploration with Elsa creating snowflakes. I loved this idea and realized that this can be done in a few different ways.
I have a book coming out soon that shows how to integrate technology into the Feierabend, Kodály, and Orff Schulwerk approaches. Creating custom manipulatives in various platforms is amongst the many ideas found in the book. In this video, my 8-year-old daughter Sarah and I show how to create simple to complex pitch exploration manipuatives using Google Slides (0:00-6:00), Powerpoint (6:00-7:32), Keynote (7:32-10:30), and SMART Notebook (10:30-end). I hope that it helps you!
