menu   home About Me My Classroom Guest Post Workshops Guest Post

Monday Music Manipulatives

Hello, I am hosting another Monday Music Manipulatives Link Up where you can see some wonderful manipulative ideas by my friend and guest blogger, Jody, as well as link up or find other music teachers who have linked up to get even more ideas. 


Hi there. My name is Jody Scott and I teach K through 5th music in Wichita, Kansas. Lindsay asked me to guest blog this week about manipulatives I use in my classroom. It was a crazy Valentine’s week, but I did manage to get some photos of things that I used with my kids. Here are some of my favorite manipulatives, ones that I use on a regular basis.

At the beginning of the school year I picked up these reusable dry erase pockets. You can find them here. They have been so useful because I can put any worksheet or visual inside and the kids can use it over and over. They erase like a dream and stay so clean. We have used them a lot and they still look new. Here you can see my first graders working on one and two sounds to a beat.





A few years ago I made these heartbeat charts. I have gotten so much use out of these! Since they are laminated, we can write on them with dry erase markers, put small manipulatives or erasers in them and write with Popsicle sticks. I found the little Popsicle sticks at a craft store and they fit perfectly in the hearts. Here are my 3rd grade students practicing sixteenth note writing and my first grade students practicing one and two sounds to a beat.





During the school day, I always have a blank page open on my Smart Board. I use it to show iconic representation of rhythm and pitch with about every grade level. One of my kindergarten favorites is to do vocal exploration with all the creative pens. Some of the pen options are rainbow, smiley faces, and snowflakes. Of course they love to make their own vocal exploration and individually show the class how to do it (Great for assessment!). This week I gave each of them a chenille stick (pipe cleaner) right after we did this activity at the Smart Board. They made their own roller coasters and of course got very creative. I was excited to hear them individually this week because their voices are really starting to match the visual representations they are making!






My first and second grade students get a lot of use out of these little packets I made a couple of years ago. I picked up a bunch of math counters at our instructional support center and cut ribbons to help the kids practice beginning staff writing. I have used a one line and two line staff with them. I like to do it this way before I move to paper writing. It really keeps the attention of the students better than paper writing and I can walk around and give immediate feedback about “on a line” or “in a space.” We practice putting the finger spaces in and putting the eighth notes close together. Then we point to them as we sing the song fragment we are writing. I can see so quickly who is getting it and who needs help.



Foam shapes are a staple for me in my classroom. You can find all kinds of shapes at any craft store. I love them because I don’t have to laminate a thing and they last forever. I can just write on them or cut them up and go. This week, we used these crowns shapes to figure out how to write “Queen Queen Caroline.” I am moving from pictures to stick notation with first grade, so I added sticks for one and two sounds. I was able to make four sets and, after we did an example as a class, the kids worked on the “puzzle” in small groups.




Another fast and easy manipulative make and use are envelopes with rhythms in them. I don’t always have time to print and laminate the cards I want the kids to read, so I cut up sentence strips with the rhythms of the song we are using and put them in an envelope. I usually make 4 or more options so we hear a variety of rhythms. Since this past week was Valentine’s Day, we used these cute little felt envelopes I found at Walmart. The game is simple and can go with so many Valentine’s and non-Valentine’s songs. The student or teacher walks around the outside of the circle while the song is being sung and delivers the letter. My 4th and 5th grade classes played the game with “I Got A Letter” and the 2nd grade classes played with “Messenger, Messenger.” The envelope game is always a hit and a super easy way to assess.





There you have it. I hope you got some new ideas or were reminded of some old ones. Thanks for letting me share. And thanks to Lindsay for asking! Jody


If you want to join this Monday Music Manipulatives Link Up, here's what to do:
1) Write a blog post about a few of the manipulatives that you use in your music room. Include the "Monday Music Manipulatives" image from the top of this post and link it back to my blog post.
2) Add the link to your blog post in my "in links" at the bottom of this post
3) That's it! Easy peasy!



A big thanks to Jody for this lovely post! Did you find a new manipulative that you want to make or already LOVE using in this post? Let Jody know by leaving a comment below!


These Are a Few of My Favorite Pins {of February}

I am linking up with Aileen Miracle for another Favorite Pins party! Below are some of my favorite finds on Pinterest this month:



1) A lovely story. I ordered this book after seeing it pinned on pinterest. I think it is great to show the importance of our musical heritage and our role in passing music on to future generations. I am thinking about leaving it for my sub to read to my kids while I am at KMEA in a few weeks.


2) Cat Goes Fiddle-I-Fee instrument ideas. I love to incorporate instruments into my lessons, but I don't feel like I am very creative in coming up with ideas, so I love finding ways to incorporate instruments with folk songs on pinterest!
Lindsay's Kodaly Inspired Classroom's pin on Pinterest.

3) Wave of Troy dance - not sure my kids are quite ready for this one, but man! It looks awesome!


4) Troika dance
Lindsay's Kodaly Inspired Classroom's pin on Pinterest.

5) A fun video of the King's Singers singing Composers names in the style of the composer! How fun!
Lindsay's Kodaly Inspired Classroom's pin on Pinterest.

Check out even more favorite pins from other music teachers by clicking on the Five Favorite Pins picture at the top of this page! If you are a blogger, you can link up to this Five Favorite Pins linky party on Aileen Miracle's blog!

Thanks for stopping by!


What Resources are You Using in Your Music Room?

I am always just so amazed that teachers like the materials I create and want to use them in their classrooms and with their students. It is really very humbling.

I got the idea this morning that I would love to see how my creations are being used in your rooms with a little giveaway attached. I set up a facebook post asking for teachers to post pictures of my things being used in their rooms. It is so fun to get a peek into their classroom as see their room set up, bulletin boards, wall space and see what concepts they are working on.

Tomorrow I will randomly select one picture as the winner, and that teacher will receive a $5 credit to use in my TPT store.



Also, through Friday, all of my Valentine's materials will be 20% off! 






Cut the Cake



Here is one of my all time favorite books:


I think I got really lucky at some point and found this on ebay for about $50. Yikes! I didn't even know what a gem it was at the time! If you ever see this book, snag it. It will be worth it!

This book is jam packed full of singing games in any formation you can think of and it sequences them not by melodic/rhythmic concept, but by movement concepts, which I think is really neat.

Obviously I am not going to try a square dance or cicilian circles with my kindergartners, but this offers a variety of different kids of dances and gives you and idea of what grade level it might be appropriate for. So many of these singing games and dances will fit right into your concept plans, but some are great just to do for FUN even if they melodically/rhythmically to difficult to read for your students.

One of the songs that I pulled recently for some more ta rest practice is singing game called "Cut the Cake"

Here's a quick demonstration video of some of my kids playing the game. I wish I wouldn't have sung along, I was sick and sound terrible. Great reminder to let your kids sing alone, Lindsay! During phrase one students clap hands, phrase 2 we shake, phrase 3 everyone in the circle grabs hands, phrase 4 "it" slices the "cake" and holds out both hands. Where ever "it" sliced the cake, those two students race in opposite direction around the circle and tag "it's" hand when they get back. The first one to tag "it's" hands becomes the new "it" and the game starts over. You need to talk about safety before you start this game. When the two people are running in the opposite direction they will pass each other at some point. They need to watch out for the other person. In my room, if they bump into each other, the game is over. The kids love to play the game, so they are really careful not to bump into each other.


After we have played the singing game we go over to the board and I have this slide projected: 

Find these ready-made slides on my TPT page here.
We pat the beat in our laps as we sing and identify that the party hats are showing us the steady beat.

If I am in the preparation stage of ta rest, I show this slide where the hats with rests look different because they are a gray or "empty" looking. Students quickly see that they are like that because there are no words underneath them. We practice tapping and clapping the rhythm (the "way the hats look").

Once ta rest has been presented, we can use this song for practice and try reading the rhythms with their rhythm syllables and making no sound on the rests.

In level 3 we worked on creating musical transitions from one song to the next to make our lessons seamless. I love to use a rhythmic transition from this song to "Pitter Patter" which I first found in one of John Feierabend's books. I play the "eraser game" transforming "Cut the Cake" into "Pitter Patter" by erasing beats 3 and 4 of the 1st and 3rd line and changing them to ti-ti's. The 2nd and 4th lines stay the same!


 Have you used either of these two songs in your ta rest concept plan? What are your favorite ta rest songs?