How Many Keys Are on a Piano?
Happy Tuesday! We are enjoying another wonderful day of summer school in Flowers Class!
MORNING ACTIVITIES
This morning, we continued working on our microphone craft using construction paper and silver/gold origami paper. With each step, we tried them out by singing into them. If they didn’t feel quite right, we added a few more things to them, and tried again until we got it!
POOL PLAY
For the second day in a row, we had pool play instead of going to the park. More of us brought our swimming suits today, so we could enjoy the pool even more than before! It has been a very nice change of pace for us, and we have had a lot of fun playing in the water!
CIRCLE TIME
Today’s circle time started with our hello song again! Th helped start us off, “Hello, hello, hello, it’s very nice to see you!” We were able to learn our new friends name, Sh, who came to our class for the first time today! We enjoyed playing with her and can’t wait to play with her more throughout the rest of the week!
After our song, we couldn’t stop our curiosity toward what was on the table. We saw many different kinds of instruments! Some of them we recognized, while others we didn’t. But before we could get our hands on them, we tried to define what an instrument is…
Re: Instrument is some song and something come out like tambourine. Microphone is like you sing and something come out.
Hi: Instrument is like when you sing, you dance.
QUESTION OF THE DAY – Can you play an instrument?
Sh: I can play a microphone. Hold it and sing.
Sh: I can play violin.
No: I like to play the piano. I have a piano at my house. I press the button.
Ak: I can play guitar and violin. I learned from Ohana. There’s a word called vibrate. You know vibrate? Vibrate means to make the sound. Vibrate is like moving. In guitar like this, you hit the stings and it vibrates, that’s what makes the sound.
Hi: I can do piano. I have a book.
Re: I can play the piano at home. When you play, we do it.
Th: I can play guitar!
Next, we looked at a book that showed us the inside of a piano! We saw the buttons, that we learned are called keys. We could see that when you press the key, it hits a string inside, the string vibrates and makes a sound! It’s almost the same as how Ak explained how a guitar works!
We could see that there are a lot of keys and strings in a piano! We tried to guess exactly how many keys there are. We took turns writing our names and guesses on the board! Whoever guessed the closest would get to choose which of the instruments on the table they want to play first!
No: 100
Hi: 7
Hi: 100
Ak: 100
Sh: 100
Sh: 5
Ty: 5
Re: 10000
Th: 8
Mi: 900
Wi: 25
Cl: 25
Yu: 100
Re: 8
The correct answer is 88! No, Hi, Ak, Sh, and Yu were the closest to the right answer, so they go to choose their instruments first! After we all chose our instruments, we sat in a circle and took turns playing them. We listened to each sound and described the sound, while thinking what the instrument might be called.
Ak: Sounds like wooden. Inside is maybe rice.
Hi: Inside is the rice and then we can do tap, or shake, this inside is so many sounds.
No: But I think it’s a little bit different (the sound).
Sh: Maybe this is made of acorns.
Wi: I guess this one is made of coconut.
Th: I think this is made of beans.
Cl: One, two here!!!
Re: It’s like you use it for beans.
Ty: It’s like mame. Mame is like beans.
Mi: This is a microphone. You sing and it makes sound.
Hi: But microphone is not an instrument.
Our class was pretty divided as to whether a microphone is an instrument. We all agreed that when we sing, our voice makes sounds, just like an instrument, but we didn’t think our voice is an instrument either.
Now that we have seen what kind of instruments we have and the sounds they make, we decided to play them along to two songs, Baby Shark and Let It Go. We played our instruments along to the beat and sang with passion! We might include both songs in our concert on Friday!
Have a nice evening! We will see you all again tomorrow!
Love,
Flowers XOXO