Here are some videos of us creating and playing our own original musical games. We are following a checklist that we made ourselves with criteria that Ms. V gathered from the student survey. 

This past class and all of this week was/will be spent creating our own musical games. We need to have at least five of the seven different criteria (that we came up with) in our game, and our game must highlight some sort of musical element or elements. Next week, we will share our games with our classmates!

The criteria for the musical games that we create is in a checklist found on this weeks home learning - go to 'home learning and resources,' click on 'home learning,' and you should be able to find it!

Today we explored 'tī rakau' which are the sticks used in Maori stick games from New Zealand. Check out our videos and pictures from the class! To learn more about the stick game you can watch Mr. Muller's video in the 4AS blog or check out the Game Band under 'resources and home learning.'

Today we decided to continue on with our inquiry into Trinidadian games. We started by listening to the song "Four White Horses" (Click on the play button above to have a listen!). One thing that we noticed while listening was the interesting sound of what could have been a xylophone or glockenspiel or piano of some sort... it turned out to be the steel drums! 


We discovered that steel drums are a huge part of Calypso music, and that most likely if you hear steel drums in a song, then you can be pretty sure that the song is from the Caribbean somewhere!


We watched a bit of a youtube clip of some steel drum playing, but if you want to watch the whole clip, you can find it below. 


After we learned the words and melody of the song, Ms. Venance taught us the clapping game that goes along with it. We played the clapping game a few times, and then we changed it a bit by creating our own clapping games with 8 beats. We had a lot of fun and there was definitely a lot of smiling and laughter in the room.


One thing that we did spend quite a bit of time talking about were the words of the song. They are very perculiar words. We talked about what they could possibly mean and also about the fact that could have CHANGED over time... maybe from being passed along by word of mouth rather than written down. Ms. Venance was once told that the words were about someone waiting to go to the sea or planning to meet another person at a specific beach on the sea. She learned that '4 white horses' is a code word or symbol for the white caps on waves in the ocean, and that 'the ripe banana' is a symbol for the shape and color of the bay where the people/person will go. 


There are also other interpretations that say the song is about hope for tomorrow, about horses running along the river, about a secret meeting place on the beach... I guess it could be about anything!!  What do you think it's about?? YOu can leave your ideas in the 'comment' section!


Here a video of a steel drum player playing calypso music from 'The Little Mermaid":

What a fun start to the New Year! Today in music we did two things; firstly, we made a list of all of the musical games that we already know of or have played before, and secondly, we had the chance to learn a new game from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. 

Over the holidays, we had a chance to reflect and talk to our families and friends about musical games. This process has helped us to start a list of all the games we know as a year four group - so far our list is this:
Musical Chairs, Musical Statues, pass the parcel, skipping games with chants and songs, the limbo, London Bridge is falling down (UK), and O Mochi O (Japan).

The game that we played and learned about today was 'The Limbo." We discovered that some  of us were already familiar with this game and have played at birthday parties and other social gatherings, but this was also a new game for others. We learned that this game originated in in Trinidad - a country in the Caribbean.  We discovered that the English dialect (way of speaking) in Trinidad is quite different from the way we speak English, and we got to experience this dialect when learning the song "Poco 'le 'me 'lone" that we sang while doing the limbo. 

Here are some quick facts that we discovered about the limbo:
- it was believed to be started by slaves who were brought to Trinidad from Africa on ships. 
-it started as a dance, and then CHANGED into a game by adding rules and adding the limbo stick
- some people believe that the action of bending backwards is a symbol of the way slaves had to stand when put in the bottom part of the ship where the area was too low for them to stand straight up when they were being brought over to the Caribbean. This is only someones idea... we don't know if it is 100% true.
-the words in the song are sung in a different dialect of English - the words are shortened or different versions of the words we use (le me lone= leave me alone)
-the rules are that you must go under the bar by leaning backwards, you must not touch the floor with any part of your body except your feet, and you cannot touch the bar. We added the rule that you have to sing while you are waiting to go under, but you don't need to sing while you are actually going under.
-there is a winner and this person is the last person standing who has not touched the bar or the floor
-Even though this game started a long time ago in the Caribbean, it is connected to many other parts of the world because we think that it is probably a game that is played in many, many countries and cultures.


We also started talking about different elements of musical games and different categories that we could create for all of the games that we know and for some of the games that we have yet to learn. Our goal is to create 3 or 4 categories so that we can put each game into a specific 'musical game' category. 


Next week we hope to have a special visitor to come and teach us a game from New Zealand!

What a great start to our first day of our inquiry into musical games from different cultures and places!

We discovered that in 4 MH, we have people from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, China, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, Scotland, and Sri Lanka! So we are sure to discover some wonderful new games from around the world!

Today we read over our Central Idea and discussed what it meant to us as a class. We also looked at our lines of inquiry, key concepts, and some transdiciplinary skills and learner profile words that we will be focusing on developing through playing, exploring, and learning about musical games over the next few weeks.

We had two home learning activities assigned for us to do over the holidays; one was to ask someone from our family if they know a musical game that is played in our culture, and ask them to teach it to us so that we can come back and share it with the rest of the class. The other home learning activity is a reflection on the game we learned today.

The game we learned today, called 'O Moshi O Tsuki Masho' is a game from Japan that Ms. Venance learned from another teacher in Laos! She did not learn it by reading the music for it, she learned it by ear only - so some of the words might be spelled wrong, or even pronounced in a different way than they would be pronounced in Japan - we talked about how these changes can happen when games are passed on through people rather than through written music. Ms. Venance was told that this game is about making rice cakes and putting them into the oven.

Here are the words - (maybe if you know some Japanese, you can help us with the spelling!):

O Moshi o tsuki Masho, o moshi o tsuki masho, petan koh, petan koh, petan petan petan koh.
Tsut konote, tsut konote, tsut konote konote konote
do do do mi so so so mi do mi so mi do mi so!

The actions are the really fun part in this game!! I'm sure if you asked someone from 4MH to show you how to play, they would be more than happy to share!

Here are some  pictures of some of the things we did today. Stay tuned for some videos of todays class as well! See you on the 3rd of January and Happy Holidays!!