Solfa Challenge Level 1

I would like to introduce the first level of my Solfa Challenge.

All of my pre-Grade 1 students are working on one of the Solfa Challenge Levels.

As a piano teacher I love the Piano Adventures Method. It starts off-stave on black keys, eventually moving to the white keys but remaining off-stave.  It gives a marvelous introduction to the exploration of pitch. It helps the students develop an understanding for how the keyboard and position on the page relate to the aural feedback.  Of course this can be done on-stave too but the stave is an unnecessary complexity at this stage. I would rather nurture their musicianship than their note reading.

Cyrilla Rowsell and David Vinden’s Jolly Music is a comprehensive classroom scheme for teaching singing and musicianship using the Kodaly Approach. As members of the British Kodaly Academy, they advocate singing to develop musicianship in adults and children, in musicians and total beginners.

The Kodaly Approach fits neatly with the off-stave Piano Adventures Method. I don’t tally my Kodaly activities directly with the pieces in the Piano Adventures books, rather they run alongside. However there are certain milestones where they intersect.

Solfa Challenge Level 1

The objectives of Level 1 are to introduce the children to the rhymes and songs that we will use in levels 2, 3 and 4. They will already know a rhyme and a song, as I introduce these during the first couple of lessons. I have written detailed posts on these songs already and you can find them here: Cobbler Cobbler and Slowly Slowly.

However in addition to these there are a few more rhymes

Soft Kitten Warm Kitten
Coca Cola Went To Town
Chop Chop Choppity Chop

The first objective of these rhymes at this level is to enable to children to feel the steady beat or pulse of the rhyme. We will perform the rhymes while clapping, tapping, marching etc. All the ideas from the Cobbler Cobbler blog. In addition Soft Kitten Warm Kitten in partnership with Chop Chop can be used to introduce the concept of dynamics – loud and soft.

There are also some songs

See Saw Up and Down
Hey Hey Look At Me
Up and Down
Cuckoo Where Are You?

All of these songs use just two notes a minor third apart. In solfa these are called so and mi. On a piano you could use G and E, F and D or D and B. Or indeed any of the adjacent black keys with the wider gap. However the easiest way of identifying the two pitches is to think of the playground taunt “ner ner ne ner ner”. Every child and adult will recognise that! It’s the easiest interval to pitch and is a perfect introduction for children to sing. Make sure you find a key that sits in their comfort zone. I usually take a guess around G and E, but then listen carefully and alter to suit if necessary.

To pass Level 1 the children just need to demonstrate that they know the songs and can perform them steadily – ideally from memory. I give them my Solfa Challenge – Level 1 Chart (this copy has had the lyrics obscured for copyright reasons) and they earn stickers to place in each circle as they have learnt each song or rhyme.

Once they are confident then we can move onto Level 2 where they have more pulse and pitch activities with each song or rhyme.

Here is part one of my guide to Level 2

Tagged: beginners, challenge, Kodaly, musicianship, piano, pitch, primer, rhymes, singing, solfa, star chart