Story Telling is a great skill for all children and your children are certainly getting their share of stories in Tell Me A Tale. One of the many wonderful things about this class is that every portion of the class involves “telling the tale.” Not just reading the story but telling the story through music, dances, instruments, arts and crafts, drama and even our snacks! Part of being a great story teller is using varied voices and inflections. Vocal development is a process that benefits both expressive speaking and singing. Children begin by exploring vocal sounds, such as animal sounds from the environment. (remember listening to all those sounds in Our Time a long time ago) Gradually, they learn to match and produce specific pitches. In Kindermusik classes, we introduce a rich and varied repertoire of songs, both for singing and for listening. We specifically choose some songs with a limited range as in the pentatonic scale; the tones of this scale are the easiest for our young singers to hear and sing. From there we add pitches and children have the opportunity to grow into competent singers by singing carefully chosen songs. All of this happens while we’re having fun.
Notable note about your instrument
The word Lummi is abbreviated from Nuglummi which meands people or us. The Lummi Indians were the principal tribe of twenty small tribes which inhabited the lower shores or the Puget Sound area in Washington. Lummi stick games evolved out of a traditional game played by the Lummi and other tribes on the Washington-Vancouver border. Stick games and dances can be found in many cultures. We will be experiencing many games and dances using our lummi sticks so don’t forget to bring them to class
