Grade 1 Music, November 2025

Our musician of the month for November is Hildegard von Bingen, a German Benedictine saint who lived from 1098-1179. Hildegard took advantage of the educational opportunities afforded her as a nun to become a well-known writer and composer, one of the earliest named composers we know of. We will also be exploring the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson, particularly the works from his book A Child’s Garden of Verses. One of his poems, The Swing, will be the text of one of our concert pieces for this year.

Now that students have a lot of practice saying rhythms that use quarter notes and eighth notes, we will explore making up our own rhythm patterns using our voices and instruments. Then we will begin to examine what quarter and eighth notes look like written down, and how to read them. Our singing focus continues to be Up Up Up by Susan Reed, another one of our concert songs.