Our amazing school choir

This week our fantastic choir sang at Winchester Cathedral in honour of the latest graduates. They sounded beautiful and were an absolute credit to the school.

Music project with the University of Winchester Music Centre

We are delighted to welcome Stanmore Primary School to be involved in a summer music project with us at the University of Winchester Music Centre and The Voice UK finalist and Winchester resident Hannah Williams!

Together we will be teaching Year 3 /4 voice parts from the Primal Scream Summer Anthem "Movin' On Up", recording them and filming them in school. These recordings will then be added to others from other schools, amateurs, families (as well as other The Voice UK singers Grace Holden, Nathan Smoker and Okulaja) to make an incredible video celebrating music, community and each other. 

You can see previous video projects on YouTube with #TeamHannah by clicking here.

The recording will be happening next week on Wednesday 14th July with other submissions open until end of July. The final video will be released at the start of September, and we look forward to sending it on to you!

The project is raising money for the homeless charity Shelter. And we hope you will use this link to donate and support the charity. Please click the link and give whatever you can. You can also copy the link and send it to friends, family, grandparents who may like to support Shelter. To donate please click here: https://bit.ly/TeamHannahMovinOnUp

Previous projects have raised £1400 for Trinity Winchester. 

This project is open to everyone! So if you children are not involved in the school project why not get involved at home? Or if they are why not get involved too! Making music is lots of fun and everyone can take part! To find out how you can join the private Facebook Group which will help you find the learning videos, tracks, how to use your phone to record a video and how to submit it to be included in the final product. To get involved at home click here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teamhannahbandandsingers/.

Many thanks!

Neil Valentine (University of Winchester Music Centre)

Birch have been exploring wildlife and sound this week

Birch class enjoyed investigating the school pond this week as part of our longitude study in science. On a cold Monday afternoon, we were surprised to see the pond teaming with life. We found; water bugs, midge lava (blood worms) and water beetles.

In science we investigated ‘seeing sound’  using cling film. a bowl and hundreds and thousands. You could try this at home!

We are really enjoying learning the play samba and the big drums are our favourite!

Willow Class - strumming the Ukulele

Today we had the pleasure of watching Willow Class during their Listen2me concert. This term they have been learning how to play the ukulele. Concentrating on the thumb brush strum and the chords, C, F, G, A minor.

During the concert, they played a wide variety of songs ranging from, Meet My Ukulele, Oh When the Saints Go Marching In, The Animal Fair, Post Man Pat, The Sailor went to Sea, Sea, Sea and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer. Thank you to all the parents and relatives that came to watch and support the performance which was enjoyed by all. We look forward to seeing if anyone has been inspired to carry on learning this wonderful instrument.

Remember they are:

• Small and easy to carry.

• Most songs can be easily adapted for the ukulele.

• Ukes can be a phenomenal primer for other stringed instruments.

• Most chord shapes are easy to play and memorise.

• Ukuleles are unique.

• Finally, they are great for song writing.

Stanmore and Winchester College working together - music and nature

On Monday 50 children from Stanmore School were invited to enjoy a fabulous Jazz Combo perform at Winchester College. The rest of the school were fortunate enough to also listen to this talented group of musicians when they performed at the school on Wednesday afternoon.

Later in the week, Birch class attended a wildlife talk by Dr Tim Mackrill who has been part of the Rutland Water Osprey team since 1997.

The children learnt that these incredible birds of prey have been saved from extinction and several pairs are now breeding in Poole. They were am​azed to learn that only 6 short weeks after hatching, the young Ospreys can migrate 3000 miles in 12 days to Africa and return to their nesting sites the following year.

Oak are being musical

In music this term we have been studying ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ by Edvard Grieg.  We started off by learning the rhythm of the first few bars using picture notation; apple and pear.  We applied our knowledge of one beat and two beat counts matching to the pictures.  We then created our own pattern of apple and pear beats and performed our compositions to the class. 

Also we learned how to accurately write musical notation on manuscript paper.  We learned to follow the first two bars of ‘In the Hall of The Mountain King’ using glockenspiels and performed to each other with percussion accompaniment. 

We are looking forward to composing our own tunes and performing using tuned and un-tuned instruments next week.