TEACHING MATERIALS -------------------------------------------------------- overview and photos teaching materials

songs

When you click on one of the titles you get linked to the page where I describe the songs.


Vader Jacob, 4/4 time
Mieke hou je vast, 2/4 time
Een twee drie vier, hoedje van, 4/4 time
Oze wiezewoze, 3/4 time
Op de glijbaan, 6/8 time
Ik maak noten en muziek, 2/2 time

C major scale
order

You can order the hand drawn booklets with rhythm charts and the C major scale, by phone 030-2942625 or by email.

- booklet with rhythm charts to match € 12,50 + € 1,50 shipping costs
- C major scale with coloured notes € 5 + € 0,50 shipping costs
- four booklets with 20 rhythm charts to match and C major scale € 50 + € 2,50 shipping costs
- 4- and 5-part arrangements of the songs € 12,50 + € 1,50 shipping costs



music theory

At the page intervals I explain intervals.

At the page scales I explain
major scales,
minor scales
and church modes (in preparation).



the booklets

Jeannette draws the teaching materials with colour pencils, splendid colours, it looks very beautiful. There are known songs (size A6), songs written by Leonoor and songs made by children during the lessons. You can unfold the booklets, they are plasticized and have rhythm charts to match, which you can put under every bar of the song as a puzzle. Children love to do those puzzles. Children can indicate the notes while we sing or play the song. With these teaching materials children (from 3 years old) learn the basics of music with understanding, see page
children.


These booklets are very suitable to work on music with a group of children. I would be nice if these booklets contribute that children get on with each other in a social way, learn to build up confidence and learn to cooperate.


photo, teaching materials, a booklet of 'Vader Jacob' Brother John with coloured notes
booklet Brother John
foto, teaching materials, C major scale with coloured notes
C major scale




photo, rhythm charts that match the songs
rhythm charts



what is needed to be able to make music

Contact with each other, talking about how you build up confidence and how you work on a good atmosphere and how rest comes is essential. It's important that everyone can say what he or she likes and dislikes. When everybody feels heard, seen and understood there comes room to be open for each other, for what you feel and for new experiences. This seems to be easily said, but I know after 40 years of experience with music and much experience of life that it takes a lot to get there.

Sometimes it seems almost impossible to find rest with a group of children, we experienced. Still we keep on working on it. With children from 3 years old you can already talk about rest and they even understand the word concentration already. To work on rest and concentration is a condition to get round to creativity, feeling, playing and singing in tune. Good accompaniment is essential in this.


--------------The more feeling you put in making music, the more beautiful it sounds.
--------------------------And actually that goes for everything in your life.





explanation of the booklets

You can sing the songs and clap all syllables. When you unfold a booklet you can indicate the notes of the song, while you sing the song. Like this you can see, hear and feel the music.

You can put the rhythm charts under the song, every chart matches to a bar. You can clap or tap the notes of the charts with bamboo sticks. You can make bamboo sticks yourself, Ø 7 mm, length 20 cm. You can buy bamboo in a garden centre.


The songs have coloured notes. Every tone has its own colour. The colours that are used, are different for every song. A c can be red in one song and green or blue in another song. It's important the colours are not fixed, so that it's not about the colours, but about the names of the notes. When you lay open a booklet and you put the C major scale above it, children can look for the names of the notes in the scale themselves. The colour than can be confusing for a while if for example the red note in the song would be another note than the red note in the scale. Like this they learn to look at the place on the staff and not linking the note to a colour. This is important to keep the connection with the existing sheet music.


We made bamboo flutes of one tone. With those flutes you can play songs together, everyone gets a flute.

Brother John is composed of seven different tones, so you need seven flutes to play the song with seven children (parents and other adults like to join in). You can see wich note you should play according to the pitch and the colour. Because everybody knows Brother John, you can see and hear when you play your tone. You can pass the flutes and like that always play another tone.
You can also play with two or more flutes. Than you can play Brother John with three or four children. In order to play a melody fluently, you can divide the flutes in a way that one person never plays two different tones in succession.




staff, notes, clef, bars and times

Every song is composed of four to six bars. One bar is always on one page or chart. A bar divides music in little pieces. Every bar ends with a bar line. There is always a double bar line (a thin and a thick line) at the end of a song.


In the booklets of the songs Brother John and Oze wiezewoze there are two dots and a double bar line at the beginning and at the end of a bar (in the first bar only at the end). It means you have to repeat that bar. photo, 1st and 2nd bar of Brother John
1st and 2nd bar of Brother John




When you unfold a booklet, the first thing you see is the text of the song, after it you see the five lines of the staff. The notes of the song are on the staff.

In front of the staff you see the clef, which is called G-clef, because the beginning of the clef indicates the note g. The g is the note which goes through the second line of the staff (seen from bottom to top).

After it you see the time signature: 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 2/2 or a big C.
A big C is another way to mark the 4/4 time or common time.



The first (or top) number (of the fraction) indicates how many beats or counts there are in a measure:
Than two, three, four or six is the number of beats.

The second (or bottom) number indicates which beats there are in a measure:
half, quarter or eighth notes are the sort of beats.




In a 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4 time the duration of the quarter note (note with a filled-in head and a stem) is one beat.

Mieke hou je vast is a 2/4 time.
There are two quarter notes (two beats) in every measure.

Oze wiezewoze is a 3/4 time.
There are three quarter notes (three beats) in every measure.

Brother John, and Een twee drie vier, hoedje van have a 4/4 time.
There are four quarter notes (four beats) in every measure.


In a 6/8 time the duration of the eighth note (note with a filled-in head, a stem and a flag) is one beat.

Op de glijbaan is a 6/8 time.
There are six eighth notes (six beats) in every measure.


In a 2/2 time the duration of the half note (open note with a stem) is one beat.

Ik maak noten en muziek is a 2/2 time.
There are two half notes (two beats) in every measure.




notes and rests



photo, teaching materials, whole, half, quarter and eighth notes and rests
note values and rests
A big size of the note values and rests is hanging on the door in our house, not too high, so that children can walk to it to indicate a note or a rest. photo, Kiki's drawing of whole, half, quarter and eighth notes and rests
note values and rests drawn by Kiki


From long to short you have whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and so on notes and rests:

The whole note is an open note without a stem.
The half note is an open note with a stem.
The quarter note is a note with a filled-in head with a stem.
The eighth note is a note with a filled-in head with a stem an a flag.
The sixteenth note is a note with a filled-in head with a stem and two flags.

Two, three, four or six eighth notes in succession are mostly connected with a beam.


Rests are the silences in the music:

The whole rest is a small beam hanging from the fourt line of the staff.
The half rest is small beam resting on the third line of the staff.
The quarter rest is a kind of twist.
The eighth rest is a dot to which a kind of seven is attached.
The sixteenth rest is a dot to which a kind of seven with an extra line is attached.


De notes indicate the melody and the rhythm.

You can sing the melody (a song) and it's indicated with the pitch, the note is higher or lower on the staff.

You can clap or tap the rhythm (the rhythm charts) and it's indicated by the lenghth of the notes (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth notes and so on).


The difference between notes and tones is nice and important to realize.
Notes have names a b c d e f g, the first seven letters of the alphabet.
You can read, write, indicate, name, clap or tap notes.
Notes become tones when you start singing or playing.
The more you sing or play tones with feeling, the more it becomes music.




Names of notes can be

absolute: --c --d --e --f --g --a --b --c

or

relative: --do --re --mi --fa --sol --la --ti --do.


The do is the tonic of a song or piece of music. The tonic is the lowest tone of a song. When a song or piece of music is polyphonic the lowest last tone is the tonic.

When the tonic is a c, the c is the do.
When the tonic is a g, the g is the do.






the biological apple

We learn fractions with a pie, but because it's not so healthy, I got the idea to use an apple. It happens to be a big success. Children keep on asking for it.

To be able to understand the note values whole, half, quarter, eighth, and so on, you can take a biological apple.
The whole apple is a whole note.
Two half apples than are two half notes.
To make the four quarter notes you divide the apple in quarters.
For the eighth notes you divide the apple in eight pieces.
After it you can put matching pieces of apple under every rhythm chart of a song.

From five years old children already can understand it a little bit, when I ask how to eat an apple together and how to eat an apple with four people and so on. By making it visual children from seven years old really can understand it. Children like to cut the apple themselves. When it went good children like to eat the apple.




photo, teaching materials, whole apple with whole note
whole apple with whole note



photo, teaching materials,two half apples with two half notes
half apples and half notes
foto van lesmateriaal,vier kwart appels bij het liedje Mieke hou je vast en ritmekaartjes
four quarter apples next to four quarter notes


photo Brother John with apples, the 3rd measure
four eighth notes and two quarter notes



the biological (large) carrot

To explain the difference between note values and counting, is not so easy.
Note values is about dividing, the fractions: whole note (1/1), half note (1/2), quarter note (1/4), eighth note (1/8) et cetera.

The values and the duration of the of the notes becomes smaller, while the lowest number (the denominator) of the fraction 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and so on becomes bigger and bigger.

It's quite difficult to understand that a whole note lasts four beats, a half note two beats, a quarter note one beat et cetera.

Then I got the idea of a (large) carrot. I use the biological carrot, because it really tastes good. You can cut the carrot into slices. Every slice is one beat.


photo, Melianna puts slices of carrot under the song 'zeg eens herder' (tell me shepherd) with rhythm charts

Melianna puts slices of carrot under a song


In a 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4 measure
the quarter note lasts one beat, you put one slice down,
the half note two beats, you put two slices together, one on top of the other,
the whole note four beats, you put four slices together, one on top of the other,
the eighth note a half beat, you put a half slice down,
the half note with a dot written after it (the dot increases the duration of the basic note by half of its original value) (two plus one) three beats, you put together three slices, one on top of the other,
the quarter note with a dot (one plus a half) one and a half beat, you put down one slice with a half slice on it.
Like apples children like to eat the carrots as well.


photo teaching materials, Brother John with rhythm charts and carrots
Brother John with rhythm charts and carrots




Finally you can combine both systems and put apples and carrots under the rhythm charts. It helps children to do this often to really understand note values and counting.


photo teaching materials, two half notes with apples and carrots
two half notes with apples and carrots
photo teaching materials, four quarter notes with apples and carrots
four quarter notes with apples and carrots
photo teaching materials, four eighth and two quarter notes with apples and carrots
four eighth and two quarter notes with apples and carrots


Instead of the words of a song, you can also sing the beats of a song.
In the song Brother John 'Morning belles are ringing' becomes: one and two and three four.

The whole song Brother John then goes like this:

one two three four, one two three four,
one two three-four, one two three-four,
one and two and three four, one and two and three four,
one two three-four, one two three-four.



drawing notes

notes from 'Au clair de la lune' with an own text drawn by Fenna
'Au clair de la lune' with an own text
drawn by Fenna
To experience what notes are, drawing notes themselves is something very nice to do for children. You can draw the 5 lines of the staff with a ruler and draw the G-clef on it. If a child can't draw alone, you can hold the colour pencil together and draw the clef or draw the clef very thin at first and let the child trace that clef. Then you can draw a song or the eight coloured notes of the C major scale, with note names: c --d --e --f --g --a --b --c


Children can also write down rhythms. If you understand that in a 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 measure all the time respectively two, three, four quarter notes in one beat, you can think of 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 measures yourself with different note values and write down, which you can clap or tap with the bamboo sticks. And when they understand that in a 6/8 measure are six eighth notes in a bar and the bar is divided in two times three eighth notes, you can think of, write down and tap 6/8 measures.