Back to School and making music.......

Well another year has started and lots of wonderful things have been taking place in the music room.  We have a brand new music series called Quaver Music. Both students and teacher love this program! I have never seen kids catch on to music concepts so fast. Grades 1 and 2 rocked strong and weak beats. Grades 3 and 4 rocked meter signatures, music alphabet/reading notes on staff, and SATB(soprano, alto, tenor, bass).  4th grade also had fun learning all about 16th notes with quaver. 

We use the Quaver 5 this year in music and with this we will have a great year.
The Quaver 5 =
1. Be Safe
2. Be Polite
3. Be Cooperative
4. Be Responsible
5. Be kind

Ask your child to sing the Quaver 5 to you! We had a blast singing along with Quaver at the beginning of the year to learn these awesome rules! Rules are important both at home and school!!

This week we will have some fun with music centers. We are adding a few new ones to our centers this week.

1. Rotten Apple Game- all of my students know the song Apple Tree. This game is sure to be a big hit and I can't wait to introduce it. The students will take turns tapping the beat on the cards. The last one they tap(on word "out") decides their fate in the game; if it's a bad apple they are out, but if it's a good apple they keep going. The person with most apples at end of game is the winner! What a great way to practice keeping a steady beat!

2. 4th grade will also play Swat the Rhythm 2. Last year we had Swat the Rhythm. Since they learned 16th notes with Quaver, we can now play the Swat the Rhythm 2, which adds 16th note rhythmic patterns. 

We have also all learned our song of the month for September which was the Star Spangled Banner.  Stay tuned for notes home about Veteran's Day and Christmas programs. We have dates for both of these and I've been busy planning for both.  It's going to be another awesome year in the music room. 

Oh, another awesome addition for the Holden parents is that we don't have to have sign and return music grades anymore. I have been given a LiveGrade account for both my schools. All my students are in there and I will be adding music grades. They will print out with all of your child's other grades.

Music in Our Schools Month

Wow, I totally need to make time to update my teaching blog. It's a great way to reflect on activities I've done in my classroom. However, I just can't seem to find time or remember to find time to update it. It doesn't take long, just always forget.

So, March has came and gone. However, we celebrated music in our school's month once again at my schools.  We started the month out by celebrating National Anthem day. We sang the "Star Spangled Banner" at both of my schools that day. Both performances were student-led. My morning kiddos sang the song during our morning routine and my afternoon kiddos had a special announcement to celebrate the day.

My Holden 1st and 2nd graders celebrated music month with a field trip to the Clay Center to see the WV Symphony Orchestra(WVSO) young people's concert entitled "Stories and Legends".  I absolutely loved seeing their responses to the concert. Field trips are stressful and hard to plan and prepare for; however, it all ended well and we enjoyed the concert. I loved hearing their responses during our post lessons/evaluation time.  The concert included some great pieces: Copland's John Henry, John William's Star Wars, Sorcerer's Apprentice by Dukas, and many more great pieces.

We also celebrated music month with a musical lunch menu week. The students announced the lunch menu during our morning routine, then during class we went over the music vocabulary and found the words on our word wall.  I love this activity! Great way to teach new words!

Spring Break ended our music month celebration. I had other activities planned but we didn't have a chance to get them done due to spring break.

I did have a wonderful display for MIOSM and my 3rd graders did an awesome writing activity that was displayed during the month!

Another highlight of music month is I got my laptop back and it's fixed. Hence the update of this blog. I missed my laptop! Next week's plans will put it to good use with my orchestra lessons.....Peter and the Wolf powepoint with grades K-1 and Young Person's Guide to Orchestra with grades 2-4(animated listening map and my Mix Presentation that I created in my Office 365 eLearning class this year).  Going to be a great week! We will conclude our lessons this week with the creation of a bulletin board entitled "We synergize to create a symphony". Every student will write their name on a music note and an instrument that they would like to play in the future.

There are 9 weeks of school left and I'm excited to end this year! My theme this year was Music Rocks and I have to say this year has rocked! My students rocked their Veteran's Day and Christmas programs. MIOSM was great! I love my job and the fact that each year ends and you can start fresh and new the next year.  What a blessing! I'm ready to end this year on a positive note. Still got several things I hope to accomplish with my kiddos before summer break, so we will be making lots of music memories the remaining 9 weeks.

Here's the bulletin board we will be completing this week. The left is my staff I drew before Spring Break and the right is the Pinterest board. 

My MIOSM board. Love this board. It's a TPT purchase from my favorite seller The Bulletin Board lady. She totally rocks! 

My 3rd graders writing activity they completed. This came with the bulletin board. They did a fabulous job writing about their favorite music activities.  I totally need to learn how to use the panoramic feature on my phone. 

My Holden students John Henry artwork was displayed at the Clay Center for our music field trip in March to see the Young Person's Concert "Stories and Legends".  Loved this lesson and the kiddos loved it also! 

My Christmas board. I love this bulletin board. Big thank you to the parents who put it up this year. They did a wonderful job! I could not survive without awesome parent volunteers. 

Elsa and Olaf came to visit during our Christmas Program this year at Omar. 1st grade did sing "let it go" with a plate routine and our 3-4 grade play was entitled "Elfis and the Frozen Princess".  

This was one of my favorite 3rd grade writing activities. I told her I'd post it and she came back the next day and asked if I posted it. 

My recorder karate board. This was only a 2 weeks span and look how much they accomplished. My 4th graders rock! We have 9 weeks left and I bet I will be adding more colors up there.  If we have time, because 4th grade has a big event coming up. The 4th grade showcase concert is May 5th! I'm so excited and so our my students.  

Well I guess I've updated a bit and got caught up on what we've been doing in the music room. Better go get my child bathed and be a mommy for a while.  See ya later peeps! 

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!