New year, new room

A new year has started and I'm in a new room. I love the new space so far! 

We have been making tons of music so far! 

All classes are still learning 7 habits songs and incorporating those wonderful habits into our classroom. 

The k-2 kids have been working on musical opposites. We've done fast and slow. They love the Old Gray Cat. We just did loud and soft this week. Lucy Locket was another big hit. They love this musical hide and seek game. 

Grades 2-4 have been using rockin rhythm raps as a warmup in class. These help us learn several words on our word wall. We've learned about quarter notes and rests, half note and rest, eighth notes, dotted half note, pattern, meter signatures, and repeat signs. We even played these on instruments a few times. We rock with rhythm!! 

Grades 3-4 have also learned about reading music on the staff. We loved playing boomwhacker relays. 

Grade 4 learned a song from their textbooks called "we remember". We discussed the events of 9/11/01. Then we listened to Alan Jacksons "where were you when the world stopped turning". We definitely explored our emotions on this lesson! Very emotional lesson! 

We are also doing Song of the Month. In August, we did "The Leader Song". September has been a "a Star-Spangled September", bc our song is "The Star-Spangled Banner". Ask your child who wrote the song and where he was when he wrote it? We have done several activities this month with this song. Grades 3-4 worked in groups to put the lyrics back together this week. 

Next week will be Apple Week for grades K-3 in celebration of Johnny Appleseed Day. Grade 4 will do an activity called Star-Spangled Evaluations, which uses YouTube videos of various performances of this song. Grades 3-4 will also begin music centers. 

We've definitely been busy in the music room and I love making music with my students everyday!  I know this year is going to ROCK!! 

School is over, Summer Break is here!

Well the extended school year is finally over. We had to have 180 days of school this year so all those snow days and flood days had to be made up. We went to school till June 24th this year. However, we still had fun in the music room.

I have never in my 11 years of teaching got to teach WV day but this year I did. I made a powerpoint presentation that included all of the state information (such as state bird, animal, colors, etc). We went over that and then discussed the state songs. We learned to sing WV Hills and Country Roads. We added both of these songs to our spring sing performance.  Every one sang Country Roads.  My wonderful 4th grade students sang the verses of WV Hills and the K-3 students sang the chorus/refrain.  It was a wonderful performance.  We only did this at Omar though. I didn't get it done at Holden though.

The rest of our spring performances included stuff we've done in music class.  My 3rd graders rocked the School House Rock Jr. songs from their books. I had a blast learning them with the students. This is the first year I have done these songs and I couldn't have chose a better group to start with. They totally rocked! This performance showed that we don't just learn about music, we learn about science(Inter planet Janet), language arts (interjections), and math (3 is a magic number).  We didn't have time to get  The Preamble learned but we did sing "We the People" because we learned it in March for the Concert for Music in our School's Month.  Both songs are about the US Constitution. I have a wonderful lesson that I created for Constitution Day, and this song will be added to it.

We also had our Leadership Days at both schools, which I am a big part of. I love the Leader in Me program. It has changed me not only at work but at home. I also love what it does at school. All of my programs and my classroom are student-led.  It may not be perfect but they are learning and nobody is perfect but God.  Omar had their 2nd leadership day this year and Holden had their first annual leadership day.  Both were a tremendous success. One 2nd grade student said "I can't wait till next years Leadership Day"(won't say what school).  I lead the students in our 7 habit songs for each special day.  Can't wait to learn some new 7 habit songs next year!!

The big event at the end of the year is my classroom being moved to the other hallway.  I will be working this summer on getting the new room organized. I'm so excited for a new beginning, b/c the new room is bigger and I will get a smart board. Can't wait to put that to use in my music centers and also for classroom activities.  Got a few summer projects I'd like to complete (like making steady beat swords) and also purchasing some things from TPT; however, most of my summer will be spent with my baby girl and my family.

Happy summer to all! Stay tuned for pictures of the new classroom when it's all done.

100th day of school

So both my schools have celebrated the 100th day of school this year! We have a lot of fun in the music room. One of our activities is to see if we can be quiet for 100 seconds. We discuss how long this is and also about sound and silence in music.
We also sing and move to a few songs in which we have to show off our counting skills. One of our favorites is an activity called Mr. B. This activity uses our speaking voices and requires us to count to 100 by 5s.

We've had a lot of fun in music for 100 days and look forward to finish up the year on a good note.

February

so our composer of the month for January was camille st saens and we had a lot of fun listening and acting out the Carnival of the Animals. My 1st and 3rd graders completed a writing activity describing their experience with carnival of the animals. They did an excellent job writing and Illustrating the piece.

February's composer is going to be John Williams. I plan to use some awesome listening glyphs and my ITunes account to download his awesome movie music.
February is another busy month with black history month/jazz month, Valentine's day, 100th day of school, jump rope for heart events (taking my kids from music class but a very good cause). My lesson plans are chalk full of fun stuff. We are also learning some songs in preparation for the concert for music in our schools month next month. We worked on "we the people" this week and had an awesome history/geography/music lesson.

I also had to decorate the front bulletin boards at Holden this month because it's music/PEs month to do this task. They turned out great! Will try and get some pictures soon.

Recorder karate

This is my new recorder karate bulletin board. I've been wanting to do one for a few years and this week I finally did. It's a work in progress. I only put the first three songs up because we are working on BAG songs. The kids loved putting their little recorder karate person up. My goal is to get everyone on white and hopefully move some up this week to yellow. They totally love this unit!

Carnival of the animals

So this week we have been learning about Camille St. Saens and the Carnival of the Animals. I have enjoyed myself this week. We've had some great conversations about the music and I absolutely love the smiles it brings when I say try being a slow moving turtle or a kangaroo. My kindergarten students were just so adorable. Loved that I had a 1st grade boy ask "how the composer made it actually sound like the animals". This lead to a great discussion. Also had a few ask why there was no singing, another great discussion.

Grades k-2 have used a PowerPoint presentation to learn the piece and each animal got them engaged with their listening ears. We used our bodies not our mouths. My 1st and 2nd graders at Holden are loving their Carnival of the Animals coloring book.
My 3rd graders have been working on a few worksheets. 2 groups did one called "what did you hear" where they had to record pitch(high or low), dynamics(loud or soft, and what instruments they hear. 2 groups are making predictions for each animal and then recording what they actually hear. Then comparing their answers.

Little background on the composer: (yes the kids learned all this)
Camille St Saens was a French composer. He shares a birthday with me: we were both born on October 9th. He had a lot of piano playing friends and he himself began playing piano before he was 3. His Carnival of the Animals consists of 14 short pieces all about a differnt animal. It is like a trip to the zoo.

Is anyone wondering about 4th grade: they did a little bit with this piece but we are in our recorder unit right now. We've started our recorder karate unit. We learn a song in class and then students play by themselves for a belt. We have a chart hanging in the room with results and hopefully will have a bulletin board soon for data. We've learned the notes BAG.

Overall, it's been a great week!

Hello 2015!

What a great start to 2015! Tried a few new lessons today and they went extremely well.

Grades k-2 did a lesson called brown bear based on eric Carl's book brown bear brown bear: what do you see. First we read or should I say sang the book. Then we passed out my animal friends and I didn't realize I had so many. I even went through the growing pile at home that my daughter never touches. Then we played the brown bear singing game. Each child got to sing a solo. It was super fun to hear their beautiful voices!

3-4th grade are finishing up music centers we started before the holidays. We even added a new one called "treble twist up". It's a version of the game twister with a musical twist. Loved watching them play today. 4th grade is working on reading those notes on the staff so we can start recorders next week. Our centers right now are:
1. Worksheet- they complete a note name test
2. Color- they complete a winter color by music symbol worksheet
3. Treble twist up- a fun note name game
4. Musical pairs- a card game that helps learn treble and bass clef notes
Extra-
5. Talk about tunes- a discussion game
6. Read me a song- if we don't have time to start a new center or the whole group isn't finished they get to get a book from our library and read
7. Rhythm center- a matching game where they have to read rhythmic patterns
8. Musical pairs- matching game
9. Abc sing with me- mostly used with grade 2 but it's a fun singing game that uses rests and synergizing

Now I'm exhausted because we just had 2 weeks off. It's a good exhausted though!