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Our Mother of Sorrows Music Program Let us Praise the Lord together!
What an exciting year! In this school year, there is a character quality theme for each month, and we have learned music that goes along with each theme. In all classes, we follow the Christian calendar. Each class learns the Mass and prayer service songs appropriate to the season so we can praise the Lord together in worship. Building the faith and character of each child is a priority, and music helps us to do both.
MOS has several choirs who lead worship at Mass and prayer services. The Catholic newspaper came and took pictures of one of our choir practices this spring for one of their issues. We have students who take instrumental lessons and participate in the MOS band and the Diocese orchestra. So both vocal and instrumental experiences are available here. We have many musically talented young people who are being discovered and are performing for our school. We had a local composer, Stephen Baker, visit and work with several grade levels to learn one of his compositions for voices and hand chimes. We performed it at Mass. Stephen is a favorite with our students, as he visited us last year and has attended our last two Christmas concerts. The fifth graders received a signed copy of his composition. Stephen is very impressed by the talent at MOS. Our upper grades have sung some three part music this year and have really enjoyed the challenge. "If you Love Me", which talks about following God's commandments, is a favorite. Several classes wrote raps about dinosaurs, and they were very interesting and funny! We all laughed! The classes going to the Erie Canal sang that song in connection with their trip to the canal. Classroom instruments are always of interest, and all grade levels have been using them recently. The lower grades have been using some homemade instruments, and some upper grades have been doing choir chimes., as well as a variety of percussion instruments. These are instruments which our young people are always eager to play. We also saw a village of houses for each instrument family and learned about all of them. We combine music and technology. The classes will be using the computer and finding web sites of interest. During the past semester we focused on Charice, a new star who has been born. You can find her song, "Note to God", by searching Charice and the title of the song. Charice's first album came out in May. We wrote our own notes to God. Some are now learning the song, which they love after hearing it several times, and some are downloading it. We will be playing some music games in the coming semester. Listening is an important part of our program, and we have heard many standard classics. This spring, we studied about Bach in a unit entitled "Music Then and Now". We heard some of his famous music, played some and sang some of his music. It has been fun to make friends with the master musician and to be blessed by his genious! Some classes did time lines with many famous composers. All classes will continue to be taught with state and national standards, which include singing, listening, evaluating, playing instruments, composing and learning music history in correlation with the other arts and classes. There will be continued integration with other subjects, especially religion. We believe in teaching the whole child and building each one up in the Spirit through music. We learn a lot in our music program at Our Mother of Sorrows!
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