Candy! Candy! Rondo

 December is a month full of holidays and is a perfect month to talk about sugar! 

This is an International Candy Rondo idea focusing on first American candies and then involving the students in an exploration of international candies. Thanks to my friend Tammy for creating this idea- she created this as a Project-Based Learning activity with her students so you could easily have your students research a cultures candy and/or treats. 

Click here to make a copy of the google slides. 

Enjoy!

Let's Talk Turkey

 If you haven't caught my LIVE on facebook yet, go check out all the past videos at https://www.facebook.com/ofortunaorff

Today I talked turkey. Yes, you read that right. I shared several of my favorites, many from my Sing a Song, Play a Game book and here are some pictures from the google slide you can get HERE. Please note this will force you to create a copy. :) 

Last year I posted about the rhyme, Mabel, Mabel and using this to play with meters of 2/4, 6/8, and 5/4 - which is SO much fun and a good challenge for older students!  

Click on the first picture for the original post:

Lastly, Pass Me the Turkey is a fun song with a CUP GAME! Check it out by clicking on the first picture to go to the original post. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful to all of you who have been reading and following along- we are almost at 1.5 MILLION VIEWS!!! I can't believe it!  Who knew 12 years ago that I would still be blogging and publishing, editing, presenting, etc.  Certainly not me. Be open to all the world offers, friends. You never know where life is going to take you. Blessings!

Monster Trouble/ In the Hall of the Mountain King

 Monsters, Monsters, how much do I love thee?

Younger Children

I love using In the Hall of the Mountain King but with little ones I do this activity. It is a fun activity using locomotor movement and a modified melody. 

Older Students

 If you have the book, In the Hall of the Mountain King, I start this lesson by reading the book.

Decode the rhythm. 

See previous posts for additional ideas.

Create Music "Trolls" or "Troll Kings" or "Monsters":

Here is my example:

Step by step directions:

Some of my students creations:

Next, we learn this speech piece and perform it by opening the monster (high), closing it (low), turning around for "monster everywhere" and moving it side to side quickly for "fast" and slow for "slow", then running in place for "go go go". 

Then we perform the speech piece with the book, Monster Trouble, every 3-4 pages. SO MUCH FUN!

Enjoy!

Vegetable Creations and Monster's Don't Eat Broccoli

 If you have been on my blog before, you know my love of cute, adorable monsters!  

I have so many monster books, as you can see here!

Monster's Don't Eat Broccoli is a very cute book with a visual "twist" at the end. The kids love the illustrations and they always make me giggle, too! 

I have several ways I use this book in the music room, here are two:

Song with Book:

Read book, sing song every time "Fum, Foe, Fie, Fee" appear. 

Improvisation:

Print the 2-beat vegetable building blocks found here. Here are a few to show what they look like:

Small groups create elemental forms using ABAB (each letter is one 2-beat building brick), ABBA, AABB, AAAB, or ABCA.  Practice performing with body percussion, transfer to barred instruments set up in C pentatonic. 

Could be performed in rondo form:

A: Song

B: Group 1 performs improvisation using their 16-beat rhythm.

A: Song

C: Group 2 performs improvisation

Etc. 

Rhythmic Speech and Body Percussion

Here are a few slides to show what this looks like. Click here for the link. 

Enjoy!

Ideas for Upper Elementary

 Upper elementary music classes can be challenging. Fourth and fifth grade students can be tough!  They may see some music activities as too childish and think themselves "too cool for school music."  They are more self conscious about everything, particularly singing, and fearful of being judged by others.  If you are in your first five years of teaching, trial and error is your best friend. Once activities are found that engage these age levels, build upon those activities to continue challenging them while achieving content and curricular goals. 

On Sunday, October 17, I am having a special guest for an Upper Elementary Chat on my Patreon site - hope you can join us or watch the video after!  Click the picture for more info! 

Upper Elementary Tips:

Invite, don't enforce. 

Establish trust, build relationships.

Play (instruments, singing games, be playful).

Build a culture of singing.

Use songs they know and enjoy.

Make it fun.

Friendly competition and challenges.

Here are a few successes.

Bucket Drumming

Choose a tongue twister, play the rhythm on the top of the bucket. Play the rhythm with rim hits only.  Play the rhythm by tapping sticks together only, etc. 

Determine on what words to add rim hits, side of bucket, tap sticks together, etc.  

Ask students to tell you the "most memorable" part of the speech or other words from the text - create a 4-beat rhythm ostinato. I have found ostinato's with rests are more pleasant than constant audible beats (think- We Will Rock You's ostinato of ta ta ta rest.). Decide how to play - rim shots, top, etc. Half the class performs the text,  half performs ostinato. 

Add another ostinato, one third of class performs text, one third performs Ostinato 1, one third performs Ostinato 2. 

Decide Form: Determine repeats, play Ostinato 1 and 2 only together, play text only, speak text only, whisper text only, etc.

Turkish March Remix

For a ready-made drumming activity my students performed in front of a Kindergarten through High School seniors event (and those high school kids went BANANAS!!) check out the post, music, and video link below (click on picture) using a trap remix:

Games

Singing games and clapping games are still engaging and fun with this age, but up the level of complexity- take the clapping game and make it more challenging as in Four White Horses where partners stand across from each other in a group of four and change when and how the clapping pattern is performed. This is from my Hands to Hands Hand Clapping Songs and Games from Around the World Book.

Or clapping games like these: 

Pass the Beat

One thing I have found that works well for these ages is a "challenge". Gameify it with a "Level 1", "Level 2" and so on, and they rise to the challenge and love it!  When we start Pass the Beat in Grade 2, we play it a few times, then play it again in third grade, adding Level 2. In fourth grade we add Level 3 - same as below, replace "room" with a pat.  In fifth grade add Level 4 - replace "pass" with snap. 

  

Popular Music 

Pop Music can still be elemental, sometimes it's the rhythm, the form, or the melody. In fact these songs use pentatonic scales in the melody (the pentatonic melodies may be a partial hook or phrase and not the entire melody or melodies):

Atlantis, by Shinee (for full lesson click on picture)

Let it Be, by the Beatles

Wake Me Up, by Avicii

Home, by Phillip Phillips

Glad You Came, by the Wanted 

They still want to have fun and are still ready to play!  Lots of things from Artie Almeida's Parachutes, Ribbons, and Scarves book with parachutes work beautifully for these ages. And, they are ready for more sophisticated and complicated rhythms and forms.

Hope you enjoy these and hope to see you soon! 

Musical Monster Fun!

 I enjoy the costumes, trick or treating, and the silly, playful fun of Halloween. I have leaned more towards monsters in the past several years as they aren't really Halloween and can be use any time of year. 

On my Patreon site there are SEVERAL posts using children's lit, songs, games, speech pieces, solo singing activities, etc. This is one recent massive post, with 3 embedded videos!  Here is a pic of some of the things from that one post: 

Past Posts:

Monsters Love Underpants

Sing Me a Monster

Hope you enjoy!