Briggs told me last week that his class is doing a science unit on sound and musical instruments (he made a guitar out of a shoe-box and rubber bands with absolutely no help from anyone else at home). I offered his teacher the opportunity to take a short field trip and come visit the church's pipe organ. She took me up on it and with my permission invited all the second-grade teachers to visit. A total of 4 are making arrangements.
Briggs' class came this morning. He was very excited and proud, but was also a good host and let others ask all the questions about the organ and answer my questions to the class (to which he knew all the answers) and didn't gloat too much about having been allowed in the casework before.
I gave a short introduction on how sound is produced by wind, how an organ pipe is engineered to make sound, and the basics of how the organ is put together (blower, console, casework). I played a few snippets of music to demonstrate various sounds (diapasons, flutes, strings, reeds, ensemble). I let groups of five blow on a set of pentatonic pipes. They concluded by playing "Old MacDonald." And I answered lots of questions!
Best part of it all? I heard one student tell a classmate as they were heading out and back to school, "I want to come to this church sometime!"
No comments:
Post a Comment