Monday, November 19, 2012

Greetings, scholars!

N.C. Wyeth is an American painter who illustrated Pilgrims, a book by Robert San Souci, that tells the story of the first Thanksgiving. Perhaps you have this book in your home library? If not, you can buy it for a penny!



Listen to more beautiful autumn music here. This composition for piano is by Russian composer, Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky, and is called November - Troika from The Seasons. The colorful painting in the video is called A Troika. A troika is a Russian sleigh pulled by three horses. Such an adventure would be quite exciting! Have you ever been on a sleigh ride?

A Troika by Nikolai Samokish (c. 1930)



 Read a bit more about Mozart as a young boy here and listen to 
Allegri's Misere again here. (I spy with my little eye Gothic architecture: thin walls, sharp spires, stained glass windows, and flying buttresses!) Do you think you would have been able to copy this piece after listening only once, as Mozart did when he was 14? His full name has one more syllable than hippomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (fear of long words)!

 Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
 (nicknamed Wolfie) 

Psssst: Young Wolfie trained his pet starling to sing!


~ Inchworm Lyrics ~
(Practice carefully three times a day!)

2 and 2 are 4.
4 and 4 are 8.
8 and 8 are 16. 
16 and 16 are 32.

Inchworm, inchworm,
Measuring the marigolds;
You and your arithmetic  -
You'll probably go far.

Inchworm, inchworm,
Measuring the marigolds;
Seems to me you'd stop and see 
How beautiful they are!

Composed by Frank Loesser,
from the movie, Hans Christian Anderson


Homework: Draw a Thanksgiving scene and hide an inchworm in it! Bring your artwork to share with your classmates for our next class on December 1. We will be building triad snowmen!