Happy Spring! Here in the South, we have green grass, budding trees, and daffodils are swaying in the wind!
This time of year always reminds me of frogs, for some reason, and so I break out all my frog songs in addition to flowers, rain, chicks and bunnies.
This lesson uses a book, The Wide Mouthed Frog, pop up edition, and a frog puppet, which you don't need but it makes the lesson much more fun. You may also want some young children who haven't learned quarter rest yet or you want to reinforce quarter rest with them.
For this lesson, you are going to need to head over to facebook and check out the ofortunaorff page - there is a video with me going through the lesson!
You will need this book available here.
I had one concert last Friday and after another 4 rehearsals, had the last two concerts on Wednesday. Whew! 28 pieces of music later, I am tired. We all know what that feels like, and how nice it is to hear from teachers and parents how much they enjoyed the concerts!
Today is my last day of school before break. This will be me at 11:45 today!
It is a half day ... and it is a crazy day we call "Gold and Maroon" which is where everyone is one of our school colors, either Gold or Maroon. Each grade is divided equally and students compete against each other in grade level teams for relay races and tug of war. But the fun and crazy screaming doesn't end there, then it is the parents turn to compete - Gold Dads compete against Maroon Dads and the same for Moms. It. Is. CRAZY! Fun, but crazy, and loud, and yes, we are in the gym!
I know many teachers are still going strong, some of you have 3 days left, some have a full week next week.
Here are a few things I have done the past couple of weeks that do not require you to print, cut, or laminate anything. I am not a fan of worksheets or coloring pages - I don't use them.
I do not know the animator who puts together these Musication videos, but I am so very grateful for these wonderful, highly entertaining and active play alongs! Great to leave as sub plans, too!!
All you need are some instruments and a projector to show these. Guaranteed fun and the best part is the children are actively making music and having a fun experience that is not at all boring - no heads on the floor and eyes closing while watching these!
1. Trepak Percussion Play Along
This is perfect for first through upper elementary! I have students watch the first minute or so, then ask them to turn and talk to a neighbor about what they saw and noticed. Then I go back to the directions page, which shows what the symbols are, what instruments are needed, who the conductors are, etc. I ask students what they notice, turn and talk, how many symbols, and then ask the older students (2nd grade and up) to problem solve; how many students do we have today, how many instruments. I try to let them help figure out how many groups of students we need and usually let them self-select groups. My students know where our instruments are and they go by group to choose the instruments to play. There is a "cymbal" part in this but I don't have enough cymbals so I let them use the gong! I give enough mallets for all to play the very large gong and they love it. It is not an instrument we use often, and this way everyone gets to play this very special instrument! Then... PLAY! It is so fun and they really love it. I usually let mine rotate through the instruments; the last group puts the instruments on the floor and steps back, then I tell them "drums go to triangles, triangles to sticks, sticks to tambourines, tambourines to gong (cymbal)". We play again and again until everyone has had a turn! SO fun.. you could also use body percussion; stomp, pat, snap, clap, lip pop!
There are two of these - one with instrument symbols - great for younger students, and one with other symbols - also good for instruments, and also good for body percussion!
2. Trepak Boomwhacker Play Along Easy
You will need a Bb for this one which uses low E and low F / G, A, Bb, B, C, D, E, F (B + E for one child)
3. Twinkle Twinkle Handbells (or glockenspiels or Orff instrument) Play Along:
4. We Wish You a Merry Christmas Boomwhacker Play Along
5. We Wish You a Merry Christmas Boomwhacker DUO Play Along
6. Jingle Bells Play Along with notes on a partial staff
7. Frosty, the Snowman Boomwhacker Play Along
Hope you enjoy these and check out musication on youtube here. They have a nice variety - everything from Sylvia Pizzicato, Frere Jacques, Black House Blues, Happy Birthday, Nima Naja, In the Hall of the Mountain King, to Rolling in the Deep! There are about 50 videos now and just added several this fall.
Happy holidays, everyone! Good luck with concerts, Happy New Year!
So.. don't laugh.. last night I woke up at 1:45 AM with this ostinato (#1 and #2) running through my head! We had just tried a few new Elf on the Shelf things with our daughter... we love our elf, Eeewee! Most of my students have an elf and so this will be fun to try with them!
I couldn't get it out of my head so had to get up out of bed (now 2 AM!!!) and write it down; well, once I'd done that I couldn't leave it alone so had to write a little poem to go with it for an "A" section and a third ostinati. So many possibilities to play with; write a little BAG melody for recorder students to play the A section instead of speaking it; review sixteenth and eighth note patterns, play on boomwhackers, develop pentatonic melody in C and accompany with Boomwhackers; play ostinato on Orff instruments in small groups set up in C pentatonic, improvise melody using rhythm of A section, use C, E, and G for ostinato parts 1, 2, and 3, etc. As you can see, once you get going the possibilities are loaded! Have fun!
I started work on this project a couple weeks ago before school started and I wanted a jungle themed project for my fourth graders to review rhythms, specifically sixteenth eighth, eighth sixteenth, and sixteenth note rhythm patterns. Our school has a jungle theme this year... hence the rainforest/jungle words. There are a few pages of words or create your own. I used "Kingthings Annex" font to create the ones here. Free to download from several sites. Create your own jungle rhythms, print, laminate, and cut apart. Save and print off the accompanying page and then have students create 4 or 8 beat rhythmic phrases to drum, play on UPP (unpitched percussion), or Orff instruments/boomwhackers in a pentatonic key. Could be used as contrasting sections to a book about the jungle or to "Jungle Beat" chant from Lyn Kleiner's Jungle Beat book.. catchy syncopated rhythm, fun to drum. Lots of ways you could use this; I hope you find a few!
So I was walking through Education Express the other night and found these:
I looked at them and immediately thought of Boomwhackers! These would be perfect as the colors (except the blue) match to C pentatonic! So I came up with this idea:
Using these:
This will be a fun center to add... I love using Boomwhackers for composition! I also came up with another one using one of the die written with letters in C pentatonic for Orff Instruments:
I have another project in mind with the rest of the colored dice and it's also a composition project- hope to finish that one after school today! TWO DAYS LEFT!! WAHOO!!
I have really loved implementing centers in music! I've found/developed several Orff-centered centers that have worked sooooo well. See previous posts for centers- these are pics of my kids "at work". Wish I could show you their faces- they have been having a BLAST!
See my earlier post about centers. Here's a few more center ideas and some visuals for you to right click and save as and print!
Drawing Notes Center sign and an extra blank sign:
Here is the grid- we are using the 4x4 for this activity. I copied a bunch and put them in a folder and then in a large ziploc bbag with pencils included. Could easily put a few of them in plastic protective pages and add dry erase markers.!
http://www.marthabeesmusic.com/the-mighty-music-grid.html
Another activity with them is thanks to mrs. King's music room blog- GREAT ideas here, folks! This is a composition activity using the grids- I have yet to make the sign up for this one but will definitely be adding it to my bucket of centers! http://mrskingrocks.blogspot.com/2012/10/composing-for-instruments-in-1st-grade.html
Heart Chart and Instrument Match Up
See earlier post for heart charts!
Instrument Match Up original idea is from here: http://www.katietraxler.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=466 Here is my version you can download, save, and print:
Rhythm of Burgers and KABOOM! Sign
Rhythm of Burgers is here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Music-Theory-12-RHYTHM-Worksheets
Kaboom idea is here- I just wrote 2 music notes on the large foam popsicle sticks from Dollar Tree: http://secondgradestyle.blogspot.com/2011/12/money-money-money.html
Boomwhacker Name That Tune (I hand wrote that title across the top of each page) and put each one in a plastic protective page. Write across the top so students know which way the music goes!
These are just some of the centers I have had fun getting ready for! Enjoy!!
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?
