MUSIC

The music curriculum at Mary of Lourdes seeks to build on foundational skills which continue to be practiced (though at a higher level each year) throughout the entire course of the program.  It is a very active approach that aims at learning through doing. While topics like music theory and history are studied (especially in middle school)  they are explored through the music that students are making themselves.

The first couple years of general music focuses on basic aural and movement skills. These include matching  pitch, keeping a steady beat, melodic memory and repetition, and spatial awareness.  Students continue to practice these skills at increasing levels of difficulty and complexity each year.

From second grade on, students also begin music literacy, and folk dance. Our literacy program focuses on training the ear and the eye simultaneously, so that students can both sound out what they see, and also write what they hear.  The traditional style group dances we learn help to build the students’ sense of steady beat, and teach them to hear musical phrasing. 

In third grade students begin to work on part singing, this starts with rounds, and partner songs, and moves on to bass lines and other more complicated forms of part singing by the time they are in 6th grade.

BAND

Our main curriculum for grades 4-8 is Essential Elements Band method, books I,II, and III.

If and when students have mastered the skills learned in those books, they progress into the Rubank band lesson book, with the exception of percussionists, who study the Alfred's Drum Method, book II.

Instruction in grade 4 band is augmented by Standard of Excellence, book I.

Students in grades 5-8 also study "Skill Builders" and "Rhythm Busters"as a group. 

Students in grades 6-8 also study "Great Warm-ups For Young Bands'', by Bruce Pearson.