What's New: Music, Gadgets, and Wonderland

It's an exciting month at CFS! I am thrilled to have received an eBeam Edge, a portable gadget that turns any whiteboard into an interactive whiteboard with just a computer and projector. Here is a very bad photo of the setup in the LS studio:

Just a few things I'll be trying with the kids this month:

A music notation page in the eBeam Scrapbook

• Having Mountain and Forest students take turns writing music notation on the board, then playing back the compositions on recorders
• Planning Springfest with the LS first-years using Curio, which allows them to create mind-maps for brainstorming, insert media, song lyrics, etc., and later drag-and-drop virtual index cards to create a "storyboard" for the event.
• Sibelius Groovy Music products for teaching many musical concepts through composing
• Collaborative GarageBand projects with LS and MS students
• Rewarding great behavior with the Bleat Box!

The Bleat Box! So much fun...

In other news, River and Sky classes had fun creating their own "alphabet compositions," using musical concepts such as dynamics, legato and staccato, and timbre to create silly music for the whole class to perform. Here are pictures of a couple of our finished products:

Finally, this weekend we'll be showing off months of work in the Middle School with our musical production of "Alice in Wonderland!" Tickets are going FAST, so reserve yours with Nancy in the Center for Friday or Saturday evening or Saturday matinee. Lower and Middle school students will also get to see the production during the school day on Thursday.