Quarter 1 Choir

The activity I’m writing about is our Winter Choir concert. The purpose of this concert was to showcase the songs that we have learned in the first and second quarter.
We learned 3 songs. “I Bought Me a Cat” by Aaron Copland, “Wakati Wa Amani” by Sally K. Albrecht, and “Dreams the Children Dream” by Ruth Elaine Schram and Celsie Staggers. The 7/8th grade choir sang I Bought Me a Cat and Wakati Wa Amani together. And the 5/6th and 7/8th sang Dreams the Children dream together as a finale piece.

In Mrs. Monsen’s class we learned about reading music. Things in our music such as rhythm, dynamics, and musicianship helped us be able to read the music correctly. Mrs. Monsen picked our songs for specific reasons. She chose “Wakati Wa Amani” to teach us to pronounce our words clearly and also to teach us choreography. Mrs. Monsen chose “I Bought Me a Cat” to teach us rhythm. It really challenged us at first because some of the rhythms in the song were off beat and fast. But once we finally got the hang of it we were able to sing it well. She chose “Dreams the Children Dream” so all of the choirs can do a song together.

The songs I really enjoyed the most were “Wakati Wa Amani” and “Dreams the Children Dream”. I liked “Wakati Wa Amani” because it was in Swahili. I like singing songs in other languages. I liked “Dreams the Children Dream” because it was a really pretty song. I liked the way we all harmonized.

On the week of our performance I was beginning to kind of nervous. But when we went into the cafetorium to practice in front of a crowd, it really helped calm my nerves down. I knew if we could sing in front of a crowd of kids and teens, we could sing in front of anyone.