Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in our school!

Can you believe we were so lucky to have some real life musicians from our city's symphony come to our school to perform specifically for us?!  There was a small group of brass musicians that played some musical pieces, old and new, in our gym.

When they were finished we were told that we were going to learn music on our flutes and the symphony would play with us!  This will be such cool collaboration.

Making our own Flute with a blessing from David Bud

On January 18 in our art room we had a visit from an elder named David Bud.  He blessed our flute material in ceremony that involved a smudge.  He used sage, tabbacco and cedar and spread the smoke over the boxes of material we later used to make our flutes.

We had a delicious feast of soup, blueberries, bannock (plain and raisin) and juice.  He told us if we couldn't finish our meals, we could not throw it away. He asked us to put it in a bucket so he could dump it by a tree, to give it back to Mother Earth.We have never done anything like that before.

We then had the chance to use drills to make the holes in our flutes.  We met Richard Dube and he played us a song and showed us how to blow properly in the flute.

Making our Flutes was fun, but then we got to PAINT THEM!!!

In art class we designed images for our flutes on a paper template.  When we were finished we had to prepare our flute so we could paint on it.  To do that we had to sand it to rough up the surface so the paint would stick.  Then we needed to tape our 'roost' to protect if from paint and remove the mouthpiece.  Ms. Ledger had stands for or flutes made of a block of wood and a nail.  We had to be very careful with them.

Once they were dried and finished, we got to PLAY THEM!!  We practice every day :)

Music Connections in Room 17

In room 17 we are starting a new project about music connections.  So far we have made a journal to write our thoughts and reflections in.  In technology we looked at some slides with different flutes and images.  While we looked at them we wrote down questions and comments.  It was interesting.

When we got back to class the next step was to sort our different questions into coloumns and pin them to our bulletin board.

Then we moved onto something a little more 'hands on'.  In art class we made handmade instruments from recyled materials.  It was AWESOME!!  There were many different kinds of instruments made so take a look...