Last day & Creating a Music Room Story Corner {Part 1}

Yesterday was our last day with kiddos and we ended our awards ceremony  with a school wide Harlem Shake. All the kids thought that was pretty fun.

Today, I am so busy cleaning, organizing, and re-purposing many things in the music room.

Some of the things in my room I have just left from when I took a job at my school two years ago. I didn't go through everything and didn't know whether to keep things or get rid of things. In general I have a really hard time throwing things away. When my mom downsized to a smaller house I had a hard time going through everything to see what I should keep and get rid of.

Our PE teacher who is quite the opposite helped me go through my cabinets and part with many, many things this morning.

One thing I have not used is our record player and records. I have everything I need on itunes. I don't bother with CD players. I love having anything I would ever need to play at the click of a button, but the records and record players are some of the things that I am keeping in storage. You just never know! I also have a record converter, so I figure I better hang onto everything until I really get the chance to go through it all.

I had a huge metal shelf that housed all of these records. It was taking up a lot of space in my room and preventing me from having enough room to make a dedicated Story Corner (more on that in a bit).

I should have taken a picture of the really old dusty records that were hanging out, totally untouched, but I forgot. Here they are all stacked in the cabinet though:

I replaced all these records with my collection of children's books, which I like to use a lot of in my primary grades, and probably even more next year with the addition of Pre-K and kindergarten music. 

I can't wait to bring the rest of my books from home to add to my collection! I haven't had the space to put them, so I usually just take the books I need to school with me and bring them home when I'm done.

Now to the Reading Corner...

I would love to have a permanent reading corner in my room with a chair for me and either a big rug or carpet squares for each kid. So I will be on the lookout this summer for a rocking chair or something cute that I could put over there. Right now when I read a story, it's "Ok, come find a spot on the floor" since my kids usually sit in chairs and I just like to have them all gathered up by me for reading and singing stories.  I think that it will help students to have a designated "spot" to go to for story times.

I would really love to find a cool chair like this for my reading corner: 

source: http://fiberandfire.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-10-21T20:12:00-07:00&max-results=7

or this:

source: http://oliveryaphe.com/kids/1152/double-the-fun

I will have to keep my eyes open this summer for things to complete my story corner and keep you updated!

Let me know if you have something similar in your music classroom! I would love to see pictures!

Now if I could just find a new home for my old record, cassette, and cd tower...  it really is very nice, just not practical since I'm all hooked up through my laptop now, and it sure does take up space.

Have a great summer!