Candy! Candy! Rondo

 December is a month full of holidays and is a perfect month to talk about sugar! 

This is an International Candy Rondo idea focusing on first American candies and then involving the students in an exploration of international candies. Thanks to my friend Tammy for creating this idea- she created this as a Project-Based Learning activity with her students so you could easily have your students research a cultures candy and/or treats. 

Click here to make a copy of the google slides. 

Enjoy!

Let's Talk Turkey

 If you haven't caught my LIVE on facebook yet, go check out all the past videos at https://www.facebook.com/ofortunaorff

Today I talked turkey. Yes, you read that right. I shared several of my favorites, many from my Sing a Song, Play a Game book and here are some pictures from the google slide you can get HERE. Please note this will force you to create a copy. :) 

Last year I posted about the rhyme, Mabel, Mabel and using this to play with meters of 2/4, 6/8, and 5/4 - which is SO much fun and a good challenge for older students!  

Click on the first picture for the original post:

Lastly, Pass Me the Turkey is a fun song with a CUP GAME! Check it out by clicking on the first picture to go to the original post. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful to all of you who have been reading and following along- we are almost at 1.5 MILLION VIEWS!!! I can't believe it!  Who knew 12 years ago that I would still be blogging and publishing, editing, presenting, etc.  Certainly not me. Be open to all the world offers, friends. You never know where life is going to take you. Blessings!

Monster Trouble/ In the Hall of the Mountain King

 Monsters, Monsters, how much do I love thee?

Younger Children

I love using In the Hall of the Mountain King but with little ones I do this activity. It is a fun activity using locomotor movement and a modified melody. 

Older Students

 If you have the book, In the Hall of the Mountain King, I start this lesson by reading the book.

Decode the rhythm. 

See previous posts for additional ideas.

Create Music "Trolls" or "Troll Kings" or "Monsters":

Here is my example:

Step by step directions:

Some of my students creations:

Next, we learn this speech piece and perform it by opening the monster (high), closing it (low), turning around for "monster everywhere" and moving it side to side quickly for "fast" and slow for "slow", then running in place for "go go go". 

Then we perform the speech piece with the book, Monster Trouble, every 3-4 pages. SO MUCH FUN!

Enjoy!

Vegetable Creations and Monster's Don't Eat Broccoli

 If you have been on my blog before, you know my love of cute, adorable monsters!  

I have so many monster books, as you can see here!

Monster's Don't Eat Broccoli is a very cute book with a visual "twist" at the end. The kids love the illustrations and they always make me giggle, too! 

I have several ways I use this book in the music room, here are two:

Song with Book:

Read book, sing song every time "Fum, Foe, Fie, Fee" appear. 

Improvisation:

Print the 2-beat vegetable building blocks found here. Here are a few to show what they look like:

Small groups create elemental forms using ABAB (each letter is one 2-beat building brick), ABBA, AABB, AAAB, or ABCA.  Practice performing with body percussion, transfer to barred instruments set up in C pentatonic. 

Could be performed in rondo form:

A: Song

B: Group 1 performs improvisation using their 16-beat rhythm.

A: Song

C: Group 2 performs improvisation

Etc. 

Rhythmic Speech and Body Percussion

Here are a few slides to show what this looks like. Click here for the link. 

Enjoy!

Musical Monster Fun!

 I enjoy the costumes, trick or treating, and the silly, playful fun of Halloween. I have leaned more towards monsters in the past several years as they aren't really Halloween and can be use any time of year. 

On my Patreon site there are SEVERAL posts using children's lit, songs, games, speech pieces, solo singing activities, etc. This is one recent massive post, with 3 embedded videos!  Here is a pic of some of the things from that one post: 

Past Posts:

Monsters Love Underpants

Sing Me a Monster

Hope you enjoy!

Hispanic Heritage Month Part 2

 There are so many wonderful songs to sing, books to read, and music to listen, dance, and play along with! 

This is a fabulous video made by Nickelodeon about well-known icons, artists, musicians, and heroes! 

Check out this post from 2020! Lots of great resources including children's literature!

Here is Part 1! 

Here are a few more favorites:

El juego chirimbolo - sheet music from Beth's Notes here.

Dos y dos son cuatro from the Holy Names University site.

Por aqui paso un caballo from my Hands to Hands book. The first version is more traditional and played with a partner. Version 2 is for a group of four.

Try this version for a *little* more fun! 

En le calle ventricuatro from Hands to Hands.

This lesson on Tito Puente, complete with moveable building blocks using elemental forms is a Patreon exclusive - for less than the cost of your monthly coffee - resources, webinars, children's literature resources, videos, etc. More and more is added every month - come join the community! 

Hope you enjoy all of these! Happy Hispanic and LatinX Heritage Month!