I have been really enjoying my own kids at home and really love the time that we spend together playing games. This will be the main focus with out Run with Pride event, getting families involved together. Why start a family game night?

GETTING STARTED

• Set a consistent day and time. You'll need to schedule 1 - 1 1/2 hours. If every week is difficult, try twice a month to start; mark it on your calendar and make it a priority.
• If you don't already have games in a closet somewhere, purchase a few to get started, and then gradually add to the collection.
• When game time approaches, give the kids a 30 minute reminder. This allows them time to finish up what they're doing, so they'll be more likely to come to the table with a positive attitude.
• NO interruptions or distractions; turn off the TV, cell phone, PDA and let your voicemail pick up phone calls.
• Select games that everyone will enjoy. Often this is difficult if there is a large age difference between your children. Parents or older siblings can team up with little ones or you can create a variation of a more challenging game.
• Each week assign a family member to be "in charge" of the game night; they pick the snack and game for the evening.

The kindergarten classes have learned songs that show the upward and downward contour in a melody. The students learned a song about trains and enjoyed moving to the different tempos like the train in the song. We had fun playing a Game Song called “Bluebird.”
 
The first grade classes gave a “SUPER” performance of their music program, “Our First Year At School” on March 3rd! In our lessons since the program, we’ve learned about the history of popcorn and enjoyed popping our bodies like popcorn. The students learned about the country of China and their customs and the long and short sounds in a song about planting rice.
 
The second grade classes gave a “SUPER” performance of their music program “A Barnyard Moosical” on February 11th! In our lessons since the program, we learned a fun hand-clapping song called “Miss Mary Mack”. The students learned how to identify steps, skips and repeated pitches in a song. We are performing different rhythm patterns with our songs and learning musical terms and definitions.
 
The third grade classes had a study on African-American Spiritual songs. They learned about the history of how those songs began. They learned many spirituals and enjoyed singing those songs. One spiritual that they learned was the history and song of “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” They learned about the “secret codes” that were hidden in spirituals. The students know how to read music and were able to put that into action by playing the boomwhackers. Boomwhackers are plastic pitched tubes and are lots of fun to play. The students had to read Melody Cards to know when to play their boomwhacker.
 
The fourth grade classes have learned a lot of American history with songs this month. We had a study about “Teaching American History with Folk Songs - The Westward Expansion, The Civil War, The Colonial Period and the American Revolution.” We learned the history of the settlers moving West in the 1800’s and the songs that were popular during that time. The students had a study on African-American Spiritual songs and learned the history of spirituals. We also learned about what was happening in our country at the time of the Civil War. We learned about the events that led to the Revolutionary War. We learned songs that were popular during both Wars. The students know how to read music and were able to put that into action by playing the boomwhackers. The students learned about different tempos and their definitions and sang those tempos in a song called “O Danny Boy.” They especially had fun dancing the “Chicken Dance’ to show different tempos.
 
On Fridays all the classes dance or have some kind of movement for the day. With St. Patrick’s Day in March, the classes learned about Irish dances and Irish music and learned how to dance an Irish jig.