Music

Music is taught by:

Brianna Mauricio-Perez

At Sunrise, you will find students in the music classroom singing, moving, playing instruments, and dancing.  No surprises there.  But you will also find students patting, clapping, snapping, and using rhyme and rhythmic speech to develop a strong sense of rhythm and beat.  At the elementary level, learning is an active experience that incorporates as much movement as it does singing or instrument playing.  The idea is that we, “get the music in their bones.”  In just the same way as toddlers learn to speak years before they grow to learn the alphabet and understand how to read and write, we also must learn how to “speak” music before we begin introducing music's written language.  Here at Sunrise, we are active music makers, becoming comfortable and competent at expressing and understanding musical ideas such as singing on pitch, finding a steady beat, and expressing rhythm a variety of ways whether that be drumming, dancing, or clapping and stomping.  Because repetition is a big part of this learning process, games are a big part of what we do as well.  When playing a musical game or any game for that matter, there is always a built in reason to do many repetitions.  “Maybe this time, I can be it!” becomes the motivator instead of “Why is the teacher making us sing this song over and over and over?”  In this way, I hope to make music here at Sunrise a fun and engaging experience that helps develop the whole child by providing opportunities for musical expression.