Drumming on Drums

Funded Dec 20, 2021

I truly can not thank you enough for all of your support and donations. My students have simply adored the opportunity to play the tubanos in our music room this year. When the tubanos first arrived at the end of last school year, the students were "oo-ing" and "aw-ing" over them. It was really sweet to see how excited they were at the sight of them. The students were sad when I said we didn't have enough time in the school year to actually use them.

Since the beginning of this school year we've had 5th Grade, 4th Grade, 1st Grade, Kindergarten, Pre-K, ASOL Autism class, and Early Childhood Special Education class all get a chance to use them in some way. 5th and 4th grade both used the tubanos as part of a piece of music they were learning. We processed all the instrument parts through body percussion, then transferred each body percussion pattern to the corresponding instruments. Each group of students were able to rotate through all the different instrument parts, meaning everyone had a chance to play the tubanos!

1st Grade really focuses on steady beat in the beginning of the year. They have practiced their steady beat on the tubanos and other unpitched percussion instruments, which prepared them to move their steady beats over to xylophones! That was a VERY exciting day for them. Kindergarten, Pre-K, ASOL Autism class, and Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) focus a lot on exploratory sounds and movements. We've been able to bring the tubanos out on several occasions for those students to hear, play, and explore with. The tubanos have a lovely resonance to their sound and the younger students absolutely LOVE hearing and feeling the low vibrations from them.

Future goals are to obtain enough tubanos to have at minimum a set for half of a class, eventually reaching an entire class set. Once this goal is achieved, I will be able to implement a world drumming unit into the curriculum for the older grades as well as exploratory drum circles with the younger grades. Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your support means so much and has helped start the journey to a much larger goal for my students.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Confletti