5 Ways to Bring Music Making into Your Home

Yesterday on my Facebook page, I shared a link to an article from TIME called "How Music Trumps Reading for Child Development". You can take a look at the article for yourself, but here are some of the key points:

• Informal music making between a parent and child has a greater impact than CDs or shows that teach music
• Informal music-making in the home from around the ages of two and three can lead to better literacy, numeracy, social skills, and attention and emotion regulation by the age of five
• Music making should be playful
• Voice is a great place to start

On my Facebook post, someone wrote "I have no money for lessons. What do I do as a homeschool mom. Any suggestions?"

YES! I have lots of suggestions for parents whether you homeschool or not.

1) Sing to your child - 

Whether you think that you can sing or not, it is SO important to sing to your child. Singing in early childhood not only helps with bonding between the parent and child, it build literacy, fluency, and helps your child to be tuneful. Not sure what to sing? Start with children songs from YOUR CHILDHOOD! These songs have stood the test of time and are a great place to start when building song repertoire for you and your child. 

These could be songs you sing together as well as songs that are just for them to listen to.

Here are some of my three year old's favorites to sing alone or with me:

1) Old MacDonald

2) ABC song

3) Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

4) Baa Baa Black Sheep (does your child notice that this sounds the same, or has the same melody, as Twinkle and ABCs?)

5) Ring Around the Rosie (with game - they LOVE it)

6) London Bridges (play as a family, making an arch and letting your child go through the arch, they love being captured when the bridge falls down at the end of the song)

7) See Saw Up and Down

Here are some of her favorites that I sing to her:
1) All the Pretty Little Horses
2) Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
3) Hush Little Baby
4) The Crabfish

5) The Gypsy Rover

I also sing her several of my favorite songs from musicals. 

Need more ideas for building song repertoire for you and your child to sing together? I highly recommend any of Jill Trinka's CDs. Again, the point isn't just to listen to the CD in the car (although that is good), but to learn the songs so that YOU can sing them with or to your child.

The book includes the singing games, but if you just want the songs, they are available on iTunes as well. Listen to a sample here:

2) Make music with found sounds

Find different kinds of sounds around the house. These do not have to be "real instruments". Kids can turn almost anything into a noise maker. Pull out your pots and pans and hand them stirring spoons, fill empty butter containers or Easter eggs with things that they can shake. The possibilities are 

endless.

3)  Listen and MOVE to all kinds of music

My husband and I have very different tastes in music so our daughter has been exposed to so much in her 3 years. He is a 5-12 band teacher and he loves jazz so much that he got a double major in music education and jazz performance. He has exposed her to so many different things in that genre and she can identify most instruments after hearing just a few seconds of something. I was in music theatre growing up, so I love listening to showtunes. I also love listening to classical music, oldies, and a lot of things that are on the radio today (don't judge). 

One thing that you will find with kids is that when they are young they have the ears for all kinds of music and they are not judgmental about music that sounds "different", "out there", or "weird" like many adults will. We have been careful to let her form her own opinions about the music she listens to and not influence her opinion of a piece.

I strongly suggest exposing your kids to varied kinds of music.

The music becomes more a part of them if they PLAY with it. For kids, this may mean rocking to the music, patting their laps to help them feel the beat, dancing with your child, etc. They so desperately need to move to the music they are listening to.

4) Bring songs to life with illustrated picture books

There are SO many illustrated nursery rhyme and song books out there. Snatch them up! I usually don't use a book to introduce the song or rhyme to my daughter. If it is a rhyme we might act it out, do a fingerplay or actions if there are some to go along with it. If it is a song, I sing it to her a few times before I pull out the book because I want her to imagine whatever she will and not have preconceived illustrations in her mind. Let them use their imagination.

Here are some of our favorite books to sing (Note that not all of these are lullabies. You need some fun, silly books too!) 

Somewhere Over the Rainbow (I do love these illustrations)

This hardcover is one of my daughter's favorites. It has 170 different nursery rhymes and folk songs and includes favorites like "Hickory Dickory Dock", "Brahms Lullaby", "All the Pretty Little Horses", "Hot Cross Buns", "Little Sally Walker", and SO many more.

Oh my daughter thinks this one is hysterical!

5) Incorporate singing into make believe/pretend play

When playing with doll, puppets, stuffed animals, house, or whatever it happens to be, we find was to incorporate music, whether that is different high or low voices for different characters, sing-songy play, or just expression. My daughter has Joy and Sadness plush toys from the Disney Movie, Inside Out and she makes their voices sound different. What a fun way to play with expression.

This summer we added nursery rhymes to our chalk time outside like this: 

Little Miss Muffet

Jack Be Nimble

If you are a homeschool parent looking for ideas for school age children, I would also recommend looking into different music educator workshops in your state or area, attending conferences, and being a part of professional organizations like OAKE or NAfME to get more training and ideas. As a Kodaly trained teacher, I think it would be great for homeschool students because the voice is the primary instrument used. You could also look into Suzuki lessons for the child and parent to take together, but for the purposes of this post, I wanted to really focus on early childhood music in the home.

What are some of your favorite ways to make music with your kids? Sound off in the comments below!

Frog in the Meadow

Since this is only my second year at my school and solfege was a brand new thing for my kids, I started with Feierabend's Coversational Solfege approach which starts out older beginners with d-r-m instead of s-m-l.

I was on the lookout for songs that are just d-r-m for my older beginners. Frog in the Meadow is a fun song for them. I have created the slides for this song and have included slides where "re" is the unknown/new concept so that I can use in the future with  my kids who will follow the traditional Kodaly sequence or for others who would like them.

Slides and flashcards are available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store

Steady beat:

Rhythm icons:

 Rhythm- stick notation:

Pitch icons

Then I repeat these slides with the solfege underneith with a ? for re.

Then we put them on the staff:

After re is introduced, we re it with icons:

Then I take away the solfege:

After we are pretty successful, they become "real" notes". We read in both f do and g do:

Take the solfege out of the notes and we are reading like real musicians!

 I also made these flashcards that can be laminated and cut on the line. You can use these to practice reading the pitches, put the song in order, etc.

This version of Frog in the Meadow is taken from "Sail Away". I have seen other versions of it that use ti-tiri.

There is a leap frog game that goes with this song.


Lindsay

Starlight, Starbright

Since I don't see kindergarten, my first graders are preparing high/low and so/mi at the same time. We are very close to presenting high/low and hopefully I will get to so-mi by the end of April.

I used the poem "Two Little Puppets" but I changed it to "Two Little Stars" to fit with my other songs of the day.

Two little stars 

One on each hand

Isn't she pretty

Isn't he grand

Her name is Bella

His name is Bo

She says "Hi" (high voice)

He says "Hello" (low voice)

I found these glow in the dark star wands at my local Dollar Tree. We turned the lights down and used the pink star as Bella, holding her way up high in the sky and the blue star was our Bo, and he lived lower in the sky. My kids adored this and wanted to have turns holding the stars and helping with Bella's (high) voice and Bo's (low) voice.

Then we played a game with the song "Starlight Starbright" and I went around the circle with my star wand singing. One student sits in the middle of the circle and keeps the beat on a glockenspiel on sol-mi. At the end of the song, whoever the star wand landed on got to make a wish and even though that doesn't sound all that exciting, to a first grader, it is. And they ALL want a turn to think their wish (because if you say it out loud it won't come true!). After they have  made their wish they get to go to the center and play on the glockenspiel.

We put the high and low sounds on our bodies to help our kinesthetic learners.

I also pair with a counting book called Dreaming

http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Countdown-Sleep-Elaine-Greenstein/dp/0439063027/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362525103&sr=1-12&keywords=dreaming

I sing "Starlight, Starbright" on the page turns. You could really use any night time sleepy book. I like that this one is a counting book and mentions stars and was already a part of my book collection. 

We also did a movement exploration called "Star Dance" from John Feierabend's Movement Exploration Book. We use our hands to be the stars. The stars rise up in the sky, dance together and apart and then travel across the galaxy where they dance with other stars.

Once we really get into the song, I use these slides. I have a Starlight Starbright packet available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

 Icons for high/low:

 Icons for so mi:

 

 so and mi with icons on the staff:

 Icons on staff without solfege:

 Real notes with solfege on staff (f do):

 Notes on staff (g do):

 Standard notation without solfege (f do):

 Standard notation without solfege (g do):

 Iconic pitch flashcards - print and cut on dotted line.

 Rhythm worksheet:

This packet is available on my TPT page: click here!
It is also included in my sol-mi bundle here!