Bells

Gah, it's only the first day practicing handbells and I already want to pull my hair out. Part of the problem is that I didn't pay close enough attention to the time signature of the second song, and it's in 3/2 time... that means six beats per measure. Normally we'd figure that out with limited problems, buuuut, two of the 6th graders didn't do much music last year and the other two had NO music last year and have never played bells before. Sigh. Trying to bridge the gap in skill levels was pretty tricky. 

Practice is always loud and chaotic. I don't know how to make it better. But this class did really well with the 'no dinging the bells when we're not playing' rule and the 'stop playing when Miss H directs you to' rule. The 6th graders wanted to practice with just them, so we did music instead of STEM time this afternoon. That meant the 5th graders had to join in... the two who play piano caught on quick. The one who doesn't was in tears because she didn't get what was going on. But the 6th grader with the most music experience (bells and violin) took her under her wing and showed her what to do. It went okay. We have a lot of work to do before the 19th. Mrs. L suggested cancelling the strange time signature song, and that's not a bad idea. We'll get the other song prepped well and if we have time, then work on the 3/2 song.

To end on a high note, today was a GREAT book day. I did book commercials of the new additions to our library and my students took pretty much all of them to read. They got super excited about most of them. Sometimes three of the seven wanted to read the same book! So they all have plans for who gets to read the book next. I have no clue how they'll remember...