Flash Mob Dance

Click on the video to see the first Sage School Flash Mob Dance!
video

Water Cycle Dances

The Juniors have been working on an in-depth study of the water cycle and how it can be represented through dance. In the videos you will see the final compositions created by Juniors C. After watching a video about the water cycle, students brainstormed ways to show the water cycle through movement. They then shared "movement drafts" of their dances with their classmates and received helpful feedback about the choreography. Finally we added just the right music to compliment the movement.
Matthew, Daniel, Gideon, Henry

Rose, Jackson

Collin, Sami, Alicia, August

Emma, Evie

Kippy, Olivia

Water Sculpture Galleries Added!

Photos from the Junior Water Sculpture unit have been added to the Sage Gallery Page. The weather has been VERY cooperative lately as the Juniors explored subtractive sculpture with snow, and cast sculpture with ice.

Click here to view the Gallery: www.emilymiah.com/sagepage

Cameron

Nataliya

Don't forget--We need a name!

One more week left to submit an idea to name the Arts blog.
A lot of interesting submissions came in today.  Looking forward to picking the most Sage-ish by the end of next week!

Simple Things

This posting to to share the warmup that Juniors classes play when we begin mallet work.  It's called "Sunset" and is written by Konnie Saliba (an Orff Schulwerk teacher--see posting below).

This is a clip of them from Friday.

It's beautifully simple--4 lines put together (one bass line, one melody, and two scaler countermelodies.)  They made me very happy with the beauty in this simple warmup, and I told them I would put them on the blog to make others happy, though it's hard to capture pretty xylophone sounds on my camera.

It's the nature of Sage students often make things as complicated as possible, and when simple things are beautiful, it's important to point them out.
Enjoy!

First Grade Shape Study

The Primes recently choreographed dances based on asymmetric and symmetric shapes. First they brainstormed and drew six shapes for each category and then chose their favorite ones to create a dance. Please click on the following link to see First Grade perform their shape dances.
First Grade Shape Dances

Kindergarteners Explore Musical Instruments

Last week in Kindergarten music, we had one of my favorite types of classes--an instrument exploration day.  Set up like centers or stations, students travel from one part of the room to another for free play/exploration with instruments that are set up in some logical way (by what they're made of, but how you play them, etc.)

To be sure, these classes are loud ones.  But they are less chaotic than you might think--the funnest part of these days is to watch when the students take the instruments at each station and organize an impromptu piece.  I heard Kindergarteners counting each other off, making rhythms for each other to echo, and examining and reexamining unfamiliar instruments to see the best sounds they could create.  When given the opportunity to make a racket, Kindergarteners will.  And just like every other novelty, it shortly wears off and the students begin playing in a way that mimics the work we do during class.  

This video is a minute long and includes still photos from that class.