Favorite Fingerplays

I love fingerplays, do you? There are so many different ones and the text is typically rhythmic and short, perfect for working on steady beat, rhythmic division, and expressive elements like dynamics and the four voices. They are also perfect to use with older students to develop ostinato (short, repeating patterns that create harmonic texture) and for improvisation. For the full slide set, click here. Here are some of the slides in the set:

Hope you enjoy!

Manipulatives - The Why and The What

Manipulatives are objects students or teachers use within a lesson to teach or reinforce a concept. 

Manipulatives are engaging and playful.  They make abstract musical concepts visual and concrete. 

Digital manipulatives made to be dragged/dropped, etc. do not engage the brain in the same way and do not impact fine motor skills.  Digital manipulatives are also not typically used in small groups and do encourage social interaction among peers.  There is a time and place for tech.  Using hands-on manipulatives, students develop and practice communication skills with small group composition or partner play.  Kinesthetic learners need the tactile experiences hands-on manipulatives provide. The best reason to use them is simple - they are inexpensive, and FUN!  

Learning Sequence

 This gives students  a variety of experiences and provides structure and familiarity while working in small groups, then partners, before individuals use manipulatives alone.

Pulse/Rhythm

When using manipulatives with rhythm I begin with imitation - students recreate the rhythms displayed. For example, students will recreate a displayed rhythm with popsicle sticks.  Then we explore rhythms using building bricks, later we would write rhythms with dry erase boards and eventually we would use pencil and paper after many experiences with imitating, exploring, and creating with manipulatives. 

Beat strips - four hearts on one side, three on the other.  This way you can work in triple and duple meters!

Popsicle sticks for rhythm dictation and composition - I prefer just the large colored ones from Dollar Tree. Some people prefer small and large ones, but I really like to KISS - Keep It Simple Sweetie! 

Foam hearts - perfect to find at Dollar Tree or your favorite craft store!  Write various rhythms on each one. 

Pipe cleaners to create notes and Noteman (thanks to Shari and Ashley for this idea).

Two- beat building bricks.  I have so many sets of these for various activities and content areas available in my Patreon community.  Print, cut, and give to students! 

Rhythm Dice; these can be created from purchased wooden dice or foam - Dollar Tree has carried these in the past. Draw notes on each side with sharpie.  Make sets of these with quarter, eighth, and quarter rest, another set which includes two single eighth notes, and another set which includes sixteenth notes.  Each side of the die is a single pulse/beat.

Group together and put into a plastic baggie - get the good heavy freezer bags and punch a hole in the top so when students put them back in and close them the air escapes and they lay flat.  Four inch (or so) piece of string in the bag to show tied notes. 

Mini erasers - These are great to use for notating the number of sounds on beat strips. Also, they are just SO cute! 

 

Melody

Staff boards                                                                                                                                                   

These are commercially available from your favorite music retailer but can be pricey.

I particularly like these staff boards made out of dollar store cookie sheets and electrical tape (also from dollar store).  Original idea from Elizabeth at Organized Chaos. On the back you could make a 2-line or 3-line staff or 4-beat rhythm blocks (the bottom shown here is 8-beats). 

You don't have to use the purchased magnets (they can be pricey); you could use foam (available in craft packs from Dollar Tree) and cut out circles to glue googly eyes on and then glue small round magnets (dollar stores and craft stores carry these).

Draw a 2-line, 3-line, or full staff on a white piece of paper, draw four boxes on the back for a 4-beat rhythm area and place the page inside these page protectors (click on photo to go to Amazon link).  Use dry erase marker or your favorite mini-erasers, transparent bingo chips, or other manipulatives.

Popsicle Stick Texting Sticks

I love these as they make solfege ladders become more personal and interactive. Click on the picture to see Ms. Manguso's tutorial and free downloadable images.  Use a glue stick or Modge Podge to stick the printed letters on. 

Felt staff with notes. Sew a zigzag stitch or use fabric paint to create lines on rectangles of felt, cut black circles from black felt for the notes or use Bingo chips. 

Skittles and M & M's 

S printed on Skittles and M printed on M and M's - give a variety of each to students to dictate a 4-beat solfege phrase for So and Mi, notate a SM song, or have students create their own!

Mini Erasers

Great for kinesthetic learners (and everyone) and fun for students to manipulate. Target has these in the Dollar Spot often and are seasonally themed. 

Pipe Cleaners/Chenille Stems

Children love the fuzzy texture and bright colors and most of them have not used them before! They are the most flexible (pun intended), highly underrated, and undervalued.  They are also wonderful for fine motor control!  You can roll and bend them into notation shapes, use horizontally to demonstrate so and mi/high and low, and bend them to show vocal exploration or movement pathways!  SO much fun in something so very small.  

Yarn for students to create vocal exploration (and movement) pathways

Cotton Balls for vocal exploration and melodies on a sky blue paper background.

Form

Cups - I like the Mini "Solo" Cups Dollar Tree has - they always have the red ones and at Christmas time they also carry green. You could also use any other cups in two or three colors to create elemental forms of ABAB, ABBA, AABB, etc. 

Construction paper or foam shapes cut into 4" squares, circles, triangles - one color per shape and one letter per shape - A, B, and C

I hope these give you some ideas. There are so many other favorite manipulatives - what are some of yours?

Enjoy,

Teaching Melody and Melodic Contour

On a recent poll, music teachers were asked what they struggle the most with and melody and melodic contour was the top answer. So, I spent my morning while home sick with Covid, yup, it has finally arrived - gave it my best shot - 3 in fact, but it hit my family this week and you know me, I can't sit still. I have been working on this for a while and this is a Patreon exclusive.  This is a 24-page mini-book available for less than the cost of Starbucks. You also get access to everything already posted there and I continue to add new material weekly. There are monthly mini-workshops and opportunities to work with me 1:1 to delve deeper into organization, lesson planning, behavior management, or anything else you might be interested in. 

So, this mini-book includes lessons, activities, and ideas about teaching Melody and Melodic Contour. There are twelve children's books listed with several lessons from my Playful Possibilities and Painted Music books. Ideas on using manipulatives, songs, games, and instruments and many other things are part of the mini-book.

Check it out today, click here.

Here is a sampling:

Enjoy,

Theme and Variations

Form is one of my favorite things to teach.  This year I decided to teach Theme and Variations a little differently and ran across my friend Elizabeth's blog post and knew she was on to something.  I loved what she had done but needed to tweak it a bit for my Orff -sensibilities and decided to add a movement component using non-locomotor and locomotor movements already learned.
I began by playing the main theme from UP and had students sing it on "la".  Then we watched this video in which the theme is clearly heard and changes based on the scene shown. 

I ask the students to turn and talk about the words, "mood" (which we have learned about previously), and how the mood changes affect the music. 

As a class we discuss instruments, tempo, dynamics, and introduce Theme and Variations. We sang  a song already learned and created four variations.  We had already done some other things and this was the final activity on day one.

The next class I had this video ready.  It is so perfect for older elementary. There will be one or two they probably don't know but have heard the music to before.  I ask my students to wait until the countdown shows "3" before guessing the title (which they get so excited about shouting out!).  It was hilarious! This is 10 minutes long, show as much or as little as you would like.

Small groups were created and each chose a theme to use - anything was up for grabs and Spongebob Squarepants, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and several others showed up but many groups chose  theme songs from the Movie Theme video. Everyone in the group had to agree on the theme song. 

Groups were then tasked with creating four variations on their theme song and everyone had to sing. 

Over the years I have collected many "Sing Like A ...." cards similar to the ones here (free pdf).  I gave students the option of using these and demonstrated (and reiterated) the need for the SOUND to be different each time.  We also talked about changing dynamics, tempo, etc. 

Groups decided on variations and wrote them on individual white boards, then practiced these.  We also added a movement component where the movement should reflect the mood of the variation.  

Students decided order of performance and everyone watching responded with two thumbs up (they heard four different variations), or one thumb up (they heard some variations).  It was so much fun and they were incredibly engaged and everyone was singing! Music to my ears! 

Hope you give it a try and let me know how it went!

Beginning of the Year

I love the beginning of the new school year - all the excitement and the exhaustion combined in one. 😂  
This year I have tried a few new things I have found on instagram and wow, I have really loved how these have worked out.  
First, and this is not from instagram as I have done this for a couple years now, let's talk oils. We have a couple people really into doTerra oils at my school which has, of course, gotten many of us interested and using oils.  I have a diffuser in my classroom and it is so cute- my kindergarten students especially love to come in and make a line by the diffuser so they can smell what is in there. The following comments and conversations are hilarious - "I wish she put lime in today" or "I love that one - smells like Christmas!" or "mmmmmm... orange.. I want to lick it". SO funny!  I also have a certain third grade student who I had a difficult time connecting with - until I found out he LOVES the lime oil. So guess what goes in the diffuser before his class?  He knows I see him, and that I care about him now and our relationship is completely different- all because of oils! Who knew?? I wish you could see the look of pure bliss on this kindergarten students face! 

Last year I had seen these touch lights on instagram and I wanted to do something like this as an Exit Ticket/Quick Assessment/Review before lining up. So I made them this summer and it has been wonderful and gets my kids thinking and talking with each other using the language of music. I use these with my older grades and they have really enjoyed using them!  

I think it was in August that I saw this idea using the song, "Aiken Drum". I have always left this song for those extra few minutes of class when I needed a quickie and use it with my Junior Kindergarten and Kindergarten students. Well, this week with first grade I started singing it and all my returning students immediately jumped in but in place of the usual "and he played upon a ladle" I stopped the song and told them that since they had moved to first grade, Aiken Drum also had moved up and now he was going to play on "instruments". Then I told them we were going to make Aiken Drum on the floor today using instruments in the classroom.  First we placed a circle on the floor for his head, then we sang, "and his hair was made of ______" and I chose a student to go pick out an instrument for his hair. It was hilarious and one of the best things I have done in a long time. At the end everyone got to pick up the instrument they chose and we played to the beat as we sang, ".. and he played upon the instruments". Great fun!  These are by two different classes- I love the ears complete with earrings - triangles!

Hope you try some of these ideas! 
Happy back to school!

Go Away Big Green Monster!

Ed Emberly is one of my favorite artists- so many fun books! I first found him when I bought the fingerprint book - if you don't have this, it is a great gift for the younger than 10 age! Here is the book:
















Today's post is all about Ed Emberley's book, "Go Away, Big GREEN Monster!".  The book is available here.  This is SUCH a cute book and so much fun for fall and Halloween without ever mentioning "Halloween".  The boldly colored pages reveal increasingly scary features of a big green monster.  "You don't scare me!" reads the caption after the monster is fully revealed.  As each page is turned, the scary features disappear, as does, of course, the monster. "And don't come back! Until I say so,".  
The activity below comes as a pdf with choices in how to present the speech/rhythm as notation only, text only, or rhythm and text.  

Process:

•Print cards and cut apart. Choose which “set” to use – the next 3 slides use the words and the rhythm, the next 3 have words only, the final 3 have rhythmic notation only.

• Read book, begin by speaking piano gradually crescendo, at “Big green scary face”, descrescendo at “Until I say so”.

•Discuss story and volume of voice; speaking voice vs. shouting voice; introduce/reinforce the four voices, introduce/reinforce dynamics of loud/quiet, very loud/very quiet and getting louder/getting quieter.

•Read again, speak rhythm parts of story (two big yellow eyes, etc.) students echo using speaking voice/volume and clap rhythm of words.

•Discuss/review unpitched percussion instrument timbres; what instrument would work for “two big yellow eyes”?  What about for “Big green scary face”?

•Show cards, students decide instruments for each part.

•Divide into 6 small groups, one for each card; assign instruments to groups.

•Small groups practice, add repeat - students perform each card twice with instruments, perform with book.

Extension:  Small Groups create a short 8 beat movement piece with scarves or other props.

Here are some of the slides for the activity- email me at musicquilt@hotmail.com for the full pdf!

Hope  you enjoy this one!

Musical Twister Game!

Vamos a la mar

Let's go to the sea!  I love the ocean - I recently did a video on my facebook site - @ofortunaorff with the ocean in the background while I sang a beach song and used cockle shells!
This is a lovely song from Guatemala and has a rhythm activity where small groups create rhythms using ocean animals. You can choose to have the students create the contrasting sections in Spanish or English and there are four different "sets" of rhythmic building blocks - colored, black and white, with rhythms, and without.
Consider adding ocean drums and rainsticks.  This is also a good one for ukulele - F and C7!
Email me for the full pdf - musicquilt@hotmail.com.
Now make plans to go to the beach!