Here's My Rhythm, Now Check My Beat

I used this today with 2nd graders and it was a great way to assess their understanding of beat. I had to speak the 1st part for every student; asked them to speak the 2nd part together. They loved it and wanted to do it again!

Best Thing I've Made in a WHILE...

Candyland Music Game! I made 1 and am now on the hunt for about 4 more boards so I can have the whole class play it together. Yesterday with fourth graders I split each class into groups of 4 then played several games I had made from fellow bloggers- so many good things out there. Rhythm Dice games, a game called Rhythm Roll, another game called Counting Up the Mountain. They ALL were dying to play Candyland, though- how funny- I never would have thought fourth graders would be the ones wanting to play THAT game! Here's a picture of the game:

This lady has some great stuff- the cards are all available to print out on her website: https://laytonmusic.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/candyland-music-sytle/ Happy Playing!!!

Back in the Music Room! Wahooooo!!!

Yippee- after a marathon clean up over yesterday and for 4 hours today, (ugh!) I'm baaaaaaack! In the music room, that is! And it's soooo clean, I'm lovin' it! We had to scrub mildew off some of my African drums and lots of the instruments. I'm so glad- it's actually been great to re-organize everything. I have also been busy while I've been in exile, ahem, on a cart, and have been making a lot of new games I've found on pinterest and other teachers' blogs. I blogged about the relay race I was going to do with my fourth graders and it was SUCH a hit. They were divided into two teams, shown an alphabet card (next time it will be a note on the staff; for this review it was great as we just used alphabet cards to review C scale), the team member ran up, grabbed the correct boomwhacker from the pile, played it once, ran to the front of the room where the staff was on the whiteboard, grabbed a fly swatter, pointed to the correct note on the staff, checked with me (quickly!), swatted the note, ran to the glockenspiel, played a C scale, ran back. Team member that was fastest earned a point for their team. I quickly showed the next card, game continued. If the teams tied, I showed TWO cards... big ooooo here! They loved it and so did I; it tied so many concepts together and was a great way to give them all time to play, review staff notes, and C scale- all in ONE game! Woohoo multitasking!

Fun New Things This Week

I'm on a cart right now- have been for a little over a week due to replacing the duct work in the music room. It has definitely stretched me and truly has been a good experience. At first I kind of freaked out- I wouldn't be able to rely on my Orff Instruments or potentially any instruments although I discovered an unused cart with 3 levels and have used instruments all week. Thank goodness for technology- using itunes on my laptop and running all sound from there has worked great even with tiny little speakers! Most difficult thing- DESKS! Would ya believe it? Yup- such a hindrance to moving expressively although I got around that one day by taking all the second graders together in our performing space and doing some dancing with them.. it was crazy, and it was Friday afternooon (what was I thinking??), but we had a great time nonetheless! Tomorrow I have third and fourth graders. Third graders are getting their neckstraps for their recorders, reviewing Hot Cross Buns (yup- in their classrooms, right next to OTHER classrooms.. yikes!), and composing rhythms and playing them on felt staffs I sewed a few years ago. If time, we'll have a "swat" (with various fly swatters) on the line notes on the staff using these cards- http://www.susanparadis.com/catalog.php?ID=SP814

Aren't they cute? Susan Paradis has an AWESOME site chock full of ideas. Later in the day, with fourth graders, we're continuing a song called "Oh What a Day"- look it up on youtube- AWESOME song! We'll perform it in canon and then they'll work in groups to develop movement to perform with each phrase. Then we'll finish with a relay race- wahoo! Quick review of staff lines and spaces, review the notes, then set up the race- show a buggy staff card shown above, students in teams run to boomwhackers

in the middle of the room, play the correct boomwhacker, run to staff on board and "swat" the note, run back to next student... might add in a glockenspiel station where they have to stop and play a scale as we've been working on C scale. Should be fun and scream-worthy! How do you use boomwhackers?