X is for Xylophone

XYLOPHONE. The ubiquitous childhood instrument. It comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. It is easy to manipulate. It requires no breath control to make it speak and no special fingerings to make it play. It pairs beautifully with metallaphones, membranes and shakers. Because a xylophone is laid out in the same left-right orientation as a piano keyboard, kindergarteners can easily be taught transferrable concepts such as the music alphabet, high/low, and stepwise movement. Today, exploring the xylophone was first and foremost on my kindergarteners' minds.

Before ever touching the instrument, we watched a YouTube videoclip of a phenomenal xylophone performance of a piece entitled, "Log Cabin Blues," to get an idea of what one sounded like when proficiently played.



We looked at a diagram of a xylophone on the board and talked about "long, low, left." (The longer the bar, the lower the pitch.) We noticed that the bars got progressively shorter and the pitch got higher as we moved to the right on the instrument. We also discussed the funky phonemic blend (Xy=Z)at the beginning of the word. (One student informed me that the "ph" makes the sound "f" like in "Philadelphia Phillies." Can you tell his kindergarten teacher is from Philadelphia?)



We carefully removed five bars creating an octave (8-note sequence) from C-C; we practiced our mallet grip and technique, we played a C-major scale up and down at a moderately fast tempo and did our best to play as an ensemble; we labeled the different parts of the instrument on a piece of paper in pencil and finally, colored our xylophone picture with crayons to take home something tangible from the experience. All modalities of learning were touched upon in this lesson (aural, visual and kinesthetic). Inquiry-based opportunities for learning were also included.











The title of one of my favorite songs from the 70's sums up today's lesson exquisitely -"We've Only Just Begun." :)

Until next time...