First of all, in the morning, Donnely taught us all about drawing with ink. We learned that ink was first used in China and then became popular all around Asia and the world. Donnely showed us a few examples of ink drawings and printing and we warmed up by practicing different strokes on a page. We used both paintbrushes with a fine tip and also sumac branches to paint with the ink.
After practicing for a while, our final project was to create an ink painting over top of a tissue paper collage that we had made at the beginning. Here are a couple examples:
In the afternoon we did a variety of different Halloween activities. First of all, the monsters listened to my autobiography ("The Paper Bag Princess"). Then, we played Halloween charades - super fun. Next, everyone decorated a mask, did some Halloween connect-the-dotes and had some free time (we watched some skits afterwards). Finally, I told my spooky story.
Since I'm a musician in my other life, I really enjoy telling musical stories when I can. I chose a scary one for Halloween (although I don't think I really scared anybody). The song is called Erlkönig (or, The Elf King, in English). It's a German song with music written by Schubert in 1815. The Erlkönig is an evil creature, or spirit, who haunts sick children. In this song, a father is riding on horseback to get his very sick son to the doctor, but the Erlkönig is haunting the child and the son is frightened by visions of the evil spirit. The Erlkönig tries to lure the child away with promises of games, songs and golden clothes, but eventually threatens to hurt him if the child will not come. By the end of the song, when they finally arrive at the doctor's, the boy has died in his father's arms.Although the lyrics are in German, you don't need to speak German to get an idea of the story (though it was pretty neat that our very own Jared translated some words for us). When I told it to the children, I asked them to listen for several things in the music. In the piano, you hear a repeated triplet rhythm representing the galloping horse. This rhythm persists until the very end of the piece, when it slows and then stops as father and son arrive at their destination. Meanwhile, the male singer actually plays 4 roles, and you can hear how he changes his voice to play each character. The narrator introduces and concludes the story in a mid-range. As the sick boy the singer sounds panicked and the notes are in his high range. As the father, the singer is quite serious and sings in a very low range. As the Erlkönig the singer uses an almost sickeningly sweet voice and sings quietly. Interestingly, when the Erlkönig is singing, the music is in a major (happy-sounding) key because he is trying to trick the child, kind of like the witch we read about in another book (P'tit Jean et la Sorcière).
Anyway, I asked the children to share this story with you if they could. You might need to prompt them by asking them to tell you what it's about, or how the voices are different. Here's the music, if you'd like to hear it for yourself, or if they'd like to tell it to you with the music as I did. Hope you enjoyed your little music history lesson for the year!
Thank you also for all the donations to "We Scare Hunger!". Our class collected two overflowing boxes of food that the Me-to-We club will donate for us. Thank you for your generosity.
Have a safe and happy Halloween!