Charlie with his birding gear participating in the GBBC!
Rain did not deter us from enjoying the event we had been
waiting for at our nature inspired piano studio! This fun-filled event is the Great Backyard Bird Count! (Held Feb 12th-15th.) To learn more about the GBBC, visit: https://www.birdcount.org/. Beautiful certificates were provided by the wonderful organizations hosting the event for those participating. Each of my students are thrilled about receiving one!
Below are items that I got for my students in preparation for this adventure! Each student received a goodie bag with a pair of binoculars, a birdhouse for their backyard, suet cake and a suet cage/feeder.
I have a few students that love Skittles!
Activities at our studio have been centered around this event. Our Suzuki song of the month is the German Folk Song, "Cuckoo". (Suzuki Piano School, Bk 1 - Assignment for Cuckoo solo.) While Book 1 students are learning it, students further along are changing it to various key signatures along with practicing their scales. To further get into the spirit of our birding adventure and to inspire students to create their own "Bird Themed" compositions, I set up a Listening Calendar of Classical, Jazz, and Rock music by composers that were inspired by birds. I also encouraged them to check out an informative book from their local library titled, "Listen to the Birds - An Introduction to Classical Music" by Ana Gerhard. Many of the songs featured during the month of February was from that wonderful book.
The composer featured this month at our studio is Charlie Parker, also known by the nicknames "Bird" and "Yardbird". His compositions, such as Ornithology, Bluebird, Happy Bird Blues, Bird of Paradise, and Yardbird Suite are highlighted in our Listening Calendar. Students will be given listening glyphs and various worksheets about this amazing composer.
To prepare for the GBBC in February, students began observing
birds in their community and using an online interactive during the month of January. I gave each student a birdhouse and encouraged them to paint a little each day after piano practice, and while doing their listening assignments. (Suzuki Piano solos and the Listening Calendar.) I truly enjoyed hearing the details that students shared with me about how they created their birdhouses. For example, Maclain told me that she looked up information about hummingbirds and learned about colors they were attracted to for birdhouses! That is how she made her choice of what colors to use. William painted his birdhouse the team colors of the Los Angeles Lakers. It had a small number 8 and large number 24 from midway to the bottom of it, which was Kobe Bryant's jersey numbers. It gave me an opportunity to share with him Kobe's Performance of Moonlight Sonata. Charlie and Karis were also very excited about sharing their birdhouses, and told me amazing information about their research!
Maclain happily shares her birdhouse!
Charlie's Birdhouse (front, left, and side view)
William's Birdhouse honoring Kobe Bryant
Jacqueline's Birdhouse. (Decorative for studio)
Karis shares her birdhouse and info that she has learned!
Along with observing birds in January, the assignment for my students was to create a composition about a bird they saw that intrigued them. What a joy it was listening to students as they described the beautiful birds that they saw, stories they had written and lyrical ideas for their compositions. There were lots of smiles and laughter as we collaborated upon how to create various sounds. My student Karis and I had a case of the giggles while writing sound of blue birds chomping down on their meal, along with their Tweet-tweet-tweets!
Charlie had fun creating the deep intimidating sounds representing the Hawk during his lesson, and the short staccato sounds of the hopping rabbit. There is a glissando when the rabbit goes underground to escape from the hawk. What a joy and honor to experience all of this with my students!! 😍
Above are examples of the compositions created! Students performed their pieces for one another during our online Performance Class on
Zoom.They are practicing to perfect the pieces to perform for Earth Day Awareness along with their Suzuki solos. For an example of one of the solos performed during class, see Kennedy's video below in this post.
I am proud that my students participated in the GBBC despite the weather earlier in the week. I wanted to impress upon their minds to continue in their admiration and observation of our feathery friends even after the event. Since the weekend was nice and sunny, we took advantage of it by breaking for 15 minutes after the piano performances to do more birding using our Scavenger Hunt as a guide.(Photo left.) When we met back, students and I shared the following info of what we found:
-Cardinals (4) -Mockingbirds (2)
-Tufted Titmouse (1) -Hairy Woodpecker (1)
-Sparrows (5) -Crow (4)
-Vultures (3) -Chickadee (1)
Mockingbird Tango by K. Green
To bring our Performance Class to a wonderful close, students shared their birdhouses that they painted.
There is one more precious thing that I would like to share in concluding this blog post. Charlie shared a beautiful illustration of his composition (The Red-Tailed Hawk) with the class! He is such an amazing student and his work truly touched my heart.The dedication, warm smiles and laughter that I see from all of my students intensifies the passion that I feel about teaching. I love and adore them.
Above are examples of the compositions created! Students performed their pieces for one another during our online Performance Class on
Zoom.They are practicing to perfect the pieces to perform for Earth Day Awareness along with their Suzuki solos. For an example of one of the solos performed during class, see Kennedy's video below in this post.
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