Bucket Drum Piece to Mozart's Turkish March - REMIX!

Over the past several weeks on my fb page -@o for tuna orff, I have been posting several live videos of the teaching process I have been using for a bucket drum piece to a piece of music my daughter found on youtube. She often listens to music while drawing (her favorite thing to do and she is an amazing young artist).  It is a remix of Mozart's Turkish March and is SO awesome!  I knew I needed to create a bucket drum piece for my top grade to perform at our Winter Concert and maybe a few other performances as well. Click here to see the final video performance on the o for tuna fb page.
Here is the score:

The pdf of the learning slides can be found here: Bucket Drum Mozart Turkish March Remix
They look like this:

The music can be found here:

Enjoy!

Glow in the Dark Music Class (Party)

For the month of March, my students participated in a Rhythm Challenge. Each grade level first through fourth grade (my highest grade) competed against other classes in their grade level and were told there was a "surprise prize" at the end for the winning class. Students read and played rhythm cards appropriate to their level at the beginning of each class along to a rap track. Before reading each card, I would say in rhythm, "Ready go". If one or two mistakes were made on a card, I called it an oops and a forgiveness. If three or more mistakes were heard, I called time and that was the high score for the day. If anyone "fussed" at another student for making a mistake (long chat about how everyone makes mistakes) the class would lose 30 seconds from their score.  Thankfully no one lost time off their score. Top score was 2 minutes, 30 seconds. I kept track on the board each week and after 4 weeks or 4 scores (whichever came first) we had winners.  Then, the best part- the Surprise Prize - everyone was having a Glow in the Dark Music Party during their next music class! The winners would have the Party for the whole class and the others for half their class (half the class was regular music but would have games and other fun activities we don't do very often). It was a HUGE hit!  I posted a video yesterday on my facebook page - @o for tuna orff, and show the setup and talk about activities.
This would be a PERFECT end of the year music party!
Then I realized I needed to make it a blog post! It truly has been one of the highlights of my year and while it takes some prep, is SO worth it!! I even did the Clap Clap song by the Klaxons with my youngest student so they could experience some of the fun. Of course, everyone loved getting to take a glow stick home with them! If you would like a pdf of this, please send me an email at musicquilt@hotmail.com.
Happy Glowing!

Favorite Halloween Books

There are so many wonderful childrens books for this fun time of year- for many ages!  

1.  Romping Monsters, Stomping Monsters

I fell in love with Romping Monsters, Stomping Monsters recently, such a cute monster book with wonderful illustrations and very adorable monsters! 

2.  Skeleton Cat

 

Another favorite is Skeleton Cat!  This oh-so-groovy book is filled with rhythms - play your favorite drum or rap track (I play mine from garage band) and read the book in a rhythmic way- once you have read the book you will see all the places you can swing the rhythm. There is a frequently repeating rhyme that begins with, "Rattle. Rattle. Clink" and all other words following this part up to "ka-plink, ka-plink, ka-plink".  Speak the first three words, have students echo, then the next sentence, etc. up to the final "ka-plink". Have students add improvised body percussion, then bring out the bucket drums!  Practice playing the first three words on top, then next sentence as rims, then a fast roll on "Purrrrrr", Add the final three words with drumsticks tapping and Skeleton Cat will be jamming!

3. If you're a Monster and You Know It

 


This delightful book is so much fun to sing and play with your itty bitties - to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It".
The illustrations are fabulously fun and students would love to cut and glue paper to create their own monsters, then sing about them - as in my previous post, "Sing Me A Monster".

4.  Nightsong 

I posted about this beautiful book and song before - here is the original post with the song and activities. 

 

Hope you have enjoyed the post! Leave a comment with your favorite books for fall or Halloween!