My Heart is Like a Zoo

 My friend Ardith is a lovely music educator with a passion for children and music education.  Many thanks to her for giving me permission to share this oh-so-lovely lesson today!  Perfect for Valentines Day! 

Read the book and insert the pages after every three animals. This is SO adorable! 

The full google slide is here.

Enjoy! 

Will You Be My Valentine?

These are a couple of favorite "Valentine" activities to use in the music classroom. 

1.  Tweet Hearts

This is a lesson from Thom Borden. 
Click here for the lesson.  He uses laminated hearts but I found these lovely foam hearts at Dollar Tree a couple years ago. Here is the book information, from amazon.com.

 

 

2.  A Tisket a Tasket

My third graders have a big jazz unit that coordinates with their study on Southern States; our high school jazz band comes to talk about the evolution of jazz and we enjoy several activities in the music classroom singing African-American songs like "Head and Shoulders, Baby 1, 2, 3" and learning to scat!  They love it, and we learn about Ella, Duke, and Satchmo.  I love playing the song, "A Tisket a Tasket" with Ella Fitzgerald singing and showing the book of the same title.

Available here from Amazon. 

Once we read/sing the book, we play the game:

Slight lyric change:  A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my FRIEND...
Players sit in a circle on floor. Inside circle place a number of instruments; Orff instruments set up in pentatonic, or unpitched percussion, etc. One player walks around outside of circle holding letters (envelopes with a four beat rhythm inside although you could have a solfege pattern written on each one or any concept you are currently working on that students need to demonstrate). At end of song the player drops one letter behind another player in the circle and is chased by the player who has the letter back to their place in circle.  Player opens letter and plays the rhythm pattern on one ofthe instruments inside circle. Play continues, letters all in instrument players hands as they walk around the circle to drop a letter to a new friend..

3.  Other posts:

Click here to see previous posts on Valentines ideas:

 



Valentine's Roses Are Red with the flu to use with Ukuleles!

So I just began to teach ukuleles two weeks ago.. we ordered them on a Wednesday, they got here on Friday (thanks, Amazon.com!) and I used them for the first time last Tuesday.  A fellow Orff teacher shared how to begin by teaching the story of the Four Little Pigs (George, Charlie, Edgar, Allison) to teach the string names.. kids loved it and the fourth graders remembered today the names of the strings!  Hallelujah! RETENTION! 
I have been working to develop some lessons where students play borduns (first and fifth of chord structures) on Orff instruments AND ukuleles and my last group of 4th graders just left and we had a BLAST!  I used "Roses are Red" set in 3/4; yes, I know most of you are probably saying, "It's 6/8!".  Well, yes... but, for our purposes today we used 3/4 in order to feel STRONG beats in 3 and also because while we experience 6/8, my 5th grade music teachers teach 6/8 and we don't label it in 4th.  :)
So... longer story longer... here it is! 

1.  Sing song, students pat or sway to the strong beat several times, then sing the song.  They will want to add "achoo" after the 2nd verse about the flu.. go for it!  Way more fun!
2.  Review how to play C chord (every other student has a ukulele; we are partnered and I tell them once they've learned it they are the expert and have to help their partners!). Let them just PLAY for several minutes to review how to strum down, etc. and then switch.. I walk around fixing fingers, etc.
3.  Show the slides with the music, talk through how to play only where it has a "C" above the measure, make a grand, STOP gesture or use a STOP sign to show where to NOT PLAY (G7 chords).  If your students already know this, wonderful; mine don't and this was their 2nd lesson in ukes. Switch so 2nd partner has a turn, do same thing (by this time I am NOT singing and only they are.. I'm pretty firm on this!).
4.  Show how to pluck the top string closest to their "chinny chin chins" for the "G7" chord.  Keep holding on to the C chord; don't let go!  Play using C chord and plucking G string (yes, I know.. but they don't know about G strings yet!).  Switch partners, play/sing.
5.  Each partner pair has an Orff instrument set up to play high C and G for C chord and remove bars around low G so they can switch to low G and high G (right hand stays in place on high G bar the entire time).  This will become the borduns the Orff instruments will play for C chord (high C/G) and G7 chord (low G/high G).  Play together with ukuleles, sing, switch, etc.
6.  Now comes the writing portion.  Show the slides new versions of the song and then the slides with the one syllable color words and rhyming words.  Students create new versions, give them about 10 minutes to practice, call time, one final minute to practice, then perform.  They were funny and clever.. some a little raunchy, which we had to discuss, of course.. ugh!  It was a fun lesson, though, and got them writing, singing, playing 2 kinds of instruments, accompanying themselves, and rhyming.. phew!  All in 40 minutes!!  Enjoy!
If you'd like as a pdf email me at musicquilt@hotmail.com

Valentine Candy Rhythms

I LOVE Target.. especially the dollar spot area! Found these oh-so-cute foam stickers and put them onto red cardstock then cut them into squares and added stickers on the back. Each package has 80 stickers!!! For $1.00!! Stickers are in two sizes. When I saw them, I thought, yippee.. eighth notes and quarter notes! Wahoo! Use these with a heart chart such as this one: I put about 10 of the hearts into a plastic bag and made 10 bags (the max number of students I have in a class is 20 and I have students work in pairs) and put all the bags in a large gallon size plastic bag along with instructions on the front. Students work in pairs to create a 4 or 8 beat rhythm using the words on the hearts; "Guess Who?" will be spoken as eighth notes and placed on a single heart, "Kiss" or "Hugs" is a quarter note and each heart rhythm will be placed on one heart (beat). Once a rhythm is created, students can practice speaking the words in rhythm and accompanying body percussion. The 4 or 8 beat rhythmic phrases could be written out in rhythmic notation, maybe played on unpitched percussion or on Orff instruments set up in a pentatonic key. I will use this as a B section to a Valentine song, perhaps "Do You Love Me?" from Gameplan, I think it's Grade 2. This would also be a great way to review iconic to actual rhythmic notation for eighths and quarter notes; each partner pair could speak their rhythm once, then play on drums or with drum sticks or chopsticks on the floor while internalizing words the second time. Have fun with them!