Music Blog
Regular updates on our musical learning at Handcross Primary
1st Feb: Super Musicians: The Viola
It's always a delight to have our amazing musicians at out school performing to the other children. Today Robyn brought her viola to school to give a performance to her class, and told us all about her instrument. It is very exciting to have such an unusual instrument being learnt at our school. Robyn has taken up the Viola as part of a West Sussex Music project called Tomorrow's Orchestra. It takes place on Saturday mornings at Millais School. More information can be found here.
25th Jan: Ukuleles
Roedeer have had a great time starting to learn the ukulele. They have all made excellent progress and are now starting to learn their second chord. This song is called My Dog Has Fleas and it a great warm up piece to play, and helps us learn the strings of our the ukulele. There are some very professional looking musicians in this class!
18th Jan: Playground Songs
We're working at becoming a singing school at the moment, where all the children and staff feel confident in singing in and around our school, throughout the day. Choir were working at a really fun song which is great for doing clapping games with. They'll be teaching it to the rest of the school next week. The children worked out this clapping pattern themselves!
11th Jan: Awesome Piano
Ethan is a superstar piano player who has lessons at school, but also has been learning lots of music himself from videos on the internet. Today Ethan put on a splendid performance to Badgers class during our music lesson.
12th Dec: Chair Drumming
We've had a very musical day today with singing rehearsals all morning, and music monitors practising their DJing skills ahead of the school disco tomorrow. But we still found time for some extra music at lunchtime today. It was wet play, so we a small team of music monitors led by Tim took a group of children from the the other classes for a super-fun wet play activity: Chair Drumming!
8th Dec: Choir singing in the community
Today our choir did a fantastic job representing our school by singing at a local care home for the elderly. We put on a carol concert at Anyska Lodge which was really enjoyed by the residents as well as some of our parents who were able to attend. The choir sounded glorious and acted as a professional group with a performance of some really enjoyable carols and Christmas songs.
7th Dec: Infant Nativity
This year we chose to give the children a real musical challenge with a Nativity performance which included some really challenging songs for our younger pupils. They performed wonderfully. We had a beautiful performance this year with wonderful actions choreographed by Sarah Palmer.
30th Nov: TOP Music
The school was very lucky today to be visited by two music teachers from West Sussex Music. They performed to the whole school on percussion and trombone and led a very informative session in which the children learnt some very interesting things about how instruments work, and even about the type of music that might have been played by neanderthals! The musicians also told the children about a new orchestra for young people in Horsham which as a a free term of lessons available for those who might be interested in signing up. More information on this is available at www.westsussexmusic.co.uk/top.
24th Nov: Make a noise!
Our year 6 Music Monitors were working very hard today to get all our children dancing to the anti-bullying anthem 'Make A Noise'. We had our PA Speaker out in the playground our Music Monitor team turning into Djays for the afternoon. They were capturing the dancing on video, and we will be working to put together our own anti-bullying video in the coming weeks.
24th Nov: Keyboards!
Our new project at Orchestra this half of term has been building up our keyboard skills. We've set up keyboards all around Kestrels class so the children all have the opportunity to play. We have learnt about major and minor chords, and the children have had great fun today playing pop songs by Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift.
14th Nov: Opera at Glyndebourne
Today our older children had the absolute amazing opportunity to see the opera. L'Esire D'Amore at Glyndebourne Opera House. The performance was spectacular and the children were enthralled by the wonderful musicians and singers. We had great seats, right next to the orchestra pit so could see the musicians playing as well as everything on stage. The entire performance was in Italian, but all the children had studied the story and knew exactly what was going on throughout. We're looking forward to exploring and learning more about opera at school in the coming weeks. Perhaps we might even look at our own opera performance in the future.
20th Oct: Chair Drumming!
At orchestra this term we are exploring different types of instruments. Today we have all been learning the drum kit, using chair drums and playing music by the band Metallica! If children want to experiment with this themselves there are free resources you can use on the Musical Futures website.
13th Oct: Its another Harvest Festival!
We had great fun singing our Harvest songs today, and sharing our fruit and vegetables with the community. We have a great group of new highly skilled keyboard players now at school who were able to accompany our Harvest Song Procession.
22nd Sept: Orchestra Is Back!
We've got a great group of new school orchestra players, who are meeting in a new slot this term: After school on Fridays. Orchestra runs as a free club, open to all KS2 pupils. In our first session this term we have been working at our keyboard skills. With our new school keyboards and piano donated by parents we are able to have the whole group playing keyboards together.
21st Sept: New Term, New Choir
Lots of new members in our choir at our first rehearsal of term today. Very keen singers have moved up from Key Stage 1 and have joined straight into singing, and we also have some very talented new choir leaders in our new year 6 singers. Today we learnt a new tune with a great story: Roll Little Orange.
20th April: Samba!
We had a very exciting musical day today, when Roe Deer and Caterpillars got to play our new Samba Kit for the first time. We are learning about samba music as part of our rain forest topic as Samba comes from Brazil. We are looking forward to playing and dancing to samba at our Summer Fair later this term.
23rd Feb: STEM Week: Foley Artists
Today as part of STEM week the children were learning about careers in music technology. We found out about Foley Artists, who record sounds for television and film. Children in key stage 2 had a great time exploring and recording unusual sounds using our new music technology equipment.
20th Jan: NEARS Group Djembe Workshop
We came together with schools from our nearby NEARS group of schools. Each school sent a small group of children who all worked together at a Djembe workshop culminating in a performance to parents before lunch. This was a really fun and rewarding morning, and lovely to see the children from different schools working so well together.
9th Dec 2022: Choir: Carol Singing at County Mall
Today our school choir were performing in public at County Mall shopping centre. We sang a huge selection of carols and other Xmas songs to a huge audience.
8th Dec 2022: Key Stage One Nativity
Today our school choir were performing in public at County Mall shopping centre. We sang a huge selection of carols and other Xmas songs to a huge audience. Amazing singing from our younger children in these performances!
1st Dec 2022: Music Celebration Assembly
We had a huge music celebration today with performances from every class in key stage 2, as well as singing and performing from our school choir and orchestra.
The classes had each prepared songs about their Stone Age topic, as well as performing on the instruments they had been learning this term: Djembe in yr 5 & 6, Recorders in yr 4 and Body Percussion in yr 3.
17th Nov 2022: Caterpillars: Ostinato Piece
Caterpillars have been working at composing and performing ostinato pieces in music over the past few weeks. We've made our own version of Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Noise here.
3rd Nov 2022: Choir: Something Inside So Strong
Its lovely to have so many new singers at Choir this term. We have been working at this inspiring song by Labbi Sifre.
20th Oct 2022: Stone Age Rap
All KS2 classes have been working at singing Stone Age themed songs this term. Today Kestrels performed the Stone Age Rap.
14th Oct 2022: Harvest Assembly
We had a wonderful Harvest assembly with lots of lovely singing. Songs included Big Red Combine Harvester, This Little Light Of Mine, Harvest Samba and Cauliflowers Fluffy. The Choir did their first performance of the year, singing John Kanaka
6th Oct 2022: New Choir Members
We've had lots of new members joining choir this term. Its been great fun learning new songs, including this sea shanty: John Kanakanaka.
30th Sept 2022: First Orchestra Rehearsal
We are very excited to have our very own orchestra taking place. We had lots of children playing a huge range of instruments. Our first piece is called: Nights in White Latin
29th Sept 2022: Caterpillars: The Human Drumkit
Caterpillars have been exploring body percussion with this great song, and this week we added the new school drum kit to the mix!
