Mortimer, Mallets and the Pentatonic Scale - Second Grade Music

Mortimer By Robert Munsch

The Story: It's Mortimer's bedtime, but he would much rather sing his rowdy song. Mom, Dad and even the police can't get him to quiet down, until they become so distracted by each other that Mortimer drifts off to sleep.

Second Grade have been using many musical skills such as singing, listening, instrument playing, mallet technique and voice projection and have turned this book into a musical piece of work!

C Pentatonic (C is Do)
We take off all F's and B's - Burgers and Fries

In order to play this piece and prepare our instruments we had to set our xylophones in a Pentatonic scale. 

A pentatonic scale is a scale made up five notes. Do, re, mi, so, la. We learned to take off the fa and the ti.

We also learned that do moves around so if C is do we take off the F's and B's but if D is do we have to take off the G's and C's.

D pentatonic is a tricky one! There is one more thing we have to do, see if your 2nd grader remembers what we have to change about the F?

The Song:

Clang, clang, rattle - bing- bang 

Gonna make my noise all day.

Clang, clang, rattle - bing -bang 

Gonna make my noise all day.

The Performance:

Here is a video from our last rehearsals in music class with the Birch Trees. Watch my YouTube channel for a performance from the Maple Trees next week!