“The second-grade students in Debbie Elmer’s class danced in their seats as music educator Jody Chaffee hit the cymbal with a drum stick,” writes Cary Ashby in Tuesday’s (11/14) Norwalk Reflector (Ohio). “Chaffee, the community engagement director for the Firelands Symphony Orchestra, said the goal of the Science of the Symphony program is to show second-graders how sound works and the way sound is produced. For about the last five years, Geotrac Foundation has provided a grant so Chaffee can teach science, reading, math and related rhythm studies in multiple schools in Huron and Erie counties…. At Pleasant Elementary, Chaffee taught students how to produce notes and sounds on brass, woodwind and string instruments and percussion. She also provided similar lessons on homemade percussion instruments, such as ‘playing’ rubber bands stretched over the hole in an empty Cheerios box…. To show the students how different amounts of water in glasses changes the pitch, Chaffee tapped the side of each glass with a metal spoon. She used the three glasses to play ‘Mary had a Little Lamb.’ … The 7-year-old [Lily JOnes’s] favorite instrument she saw Monday was the viola because she said ‘it plays the pretty, pretty music.’ ”
Posted November 16, 2017
