Halloween Music Manipulatives

This week for Monday Music Manipulatives I am sharing some Halloween themed manipulatives for the music room.

1) Halloween Themed Erasers

You can use these Halloween themed erasers to show how many sounds on a beat by placing them on beat charts, or for melodic writing and dictating on individual staff pages. I have a class set of staff pages like these below that are laminated and having different erasers keeps it fresh and fun for the kiddos. 

I picked up some of these erasers over the years, usually from the Target dollar section.

These kitty cat heads are perfect for Naughty Kitty Cat:

The ghost ones are fun for Skin and Bones, Ghost of Tom, or using to show the rhythms of Miss White.

2) Halloween themed table scatter

I found this pumpkin table scatter one year at Target and it is great for melodic dictation and writing (like with the erasers above), or to show the rhythms on top of beat charts.

3) Foam Halloween Shapes

You can write rhythms, rhythm patterns, solfege, etc. on these! Scatter them around and have students see if they can figure out the song. 

You can also have them compose their own pumpkin patterns using these. You could easily pair it with these Pumpkin Composition Pages.

4) Rhythm Blocks

Use these rhythm blocks to show the patterns from Halloween songs. You can find these pre-made rhythm blocks in lots of colors here. Read more about them in this blog post.

Bulletin Boards for Halloween in the Music Room

I got to invade one of my friend's classrooms this afternoon and decorate a few of her bulletin boards for her to get them ready for Halloween.

I always wished that I could change out my Solfa Street board just a bit throughout the year, making it match what is going on in the year, so I finally made some haunted houses to go on Solfa Street to create a SPOOOKY SOLFA STREET:

I didn't staple the houses down so they can easily come on and off. Instead, you can put sticky Velcro pieces on the back and they can come on and off the board easily. You could also make or find little "for sale" signs to put on the unknown pitches. 

The bats came in a package of five from Dollar Tree. The orange tissue poms came from Hobby Lobby.

If you love this bulletin board, you can find the houses and headers in my TpT store here.

Up next I worked on her long board. This board is huge - 4 ft. by 8 ft. I backed the board in purple butcher paper from the teacher's work room and then added a sheer black spider web fabric from Hobby Lobby on top. 

You can't really tell in any of the pictures but the sheer fabric has some sparkle to it. All of the kids really seemed to love this board and the pictures do not do it justice! (darn school lighting!)

I used my new Halloween themed lines and spaces bulletin board kit. The heading reads "Double, double toil and trouble. Lines and Spaces all will BUBBLE!" 

Since the background was so dark, I used orange crepe paper from Dollar Tree to make the lines of the staff. You could always add a clef, I just have never been able to make one that big that looks right and I don't usually get to bass clef with any/many of my classes.

My friend got the super cute decor that we used along the top of the board from her office. A parent had made it for the school and they hung it in the office last year but weren't planning on using it this year. It was such a cute touch to this board and we didn't have to pay anything for it! Use your resources! You will be surprised what might be hiding in a box at your school.

 A bit of a closer look at some of the fabric and cutouts:

Thank you to Miss Moka for sharing this picture from her room. 

If you would love this bulletin board kit for your classroom you can find it here.

Halloween Favorites

Kids love Halloween. As a kid, it was my favorite holiday. I loved getting to dress up and go trick or treating. Here are some of the tricks and treats from my music room this week:

Skin and Bones is so fun to play with any age! I turn the lights off, students sit in a circle and I go around the outside of the circle singing the song and I use an egg shaker to shake on the "oo's" just for a fun sound effect. On "boo" the whole class is usually scarred. I have best success with this game around 3rd grade, but it's fun all the way up through 5th grade. I've seen lots of fun variations on games for skin and bones on facebook recently. My favorite (though a little creepy) was to have the kids all lay on the floor and rise up to a sitting position on to "oo's" then lay back down. I will have to remember that for next year. This song is perfect because I am about ready to present low la! It is a really easy repeated part to play on the Orff instruments too.

This morning I did rhythmic dictation using Q tips as "bones" with my fifth graders. After a few practice rounds, they got to create their own four beat bone rhythm pattern. It was a little difficult to get the tiri-tiri's to stay so some are falling down, but you get the idea! They loved it!

Monster Mash Freeze Dance has been a big hit today. I play the song Monster Mash, but you could use any spooky dancable song. When I pause the music the kids have to freeze like the picture. This activity is fun way to get them moving and isolating different parts of their bodies. They have to think creatively for some to figure out how to make their bodies best match the pictures:

They have to really think creatively for some to figure out how to make their bodies best match the pictures:

These are available on my TPT store here:

We are busy practicing ta rest:

During prep, we may just play a singing game. I play this one kind of like Closet Key. My students sit in a circle. I put a witch had in the middle and select a student to sit by the witch hat (they don't wear it because you just never know about head lice). I go around the circle with a penny and hide it in one student's hands. The witch has three guesses of where the penny is. The kids really enjoyed playing this game.

Reviewing high low in prep for sol-mi:

I found these great Halloween erasers at Target in the dollar bins to use on our high/low staff:

Pitch matching: 

The students would not see this. Teacher sings "What will you be on Halloween night?" (s mm s m ss m s) Students answer in their singing voice with whatever they will be (ex. I will be a black cat - ss mm s m)

I cover a mallet with Kleenex and drew on eyes and a mouth and now have "Spooky the Ghost". The kids love to sing to Spooky. He can only hear us if we use our singing voices! :)

If you have a different Halloween puppet that would work too, but this is so easy to make!

Children's Literature:

The Halloween House can be sung to the tune of Over in the Meadow. Instead of counting forwards, it counts backwards, which is a lovely skill to work on with kindergarten. 

Here's a little video of me reading a portion of it so you can get the melody I use.

What's going on in your music room? Share some ideas in the comments!

Lindsay