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.

Thanksgiving Week {Take a Peek at my Week}

Looking for some ideas for your elementary music classes in the days or weeks leading up to Thanksgiving?

1) Ho Ho Watanay - I used this song with kindergarten and first grade this week. In kindergarten it was perfect timing as we are practicing loud/soft and introducing the term "lullaby". We also tapped on the feathers to the feel of the music (preparing the steady beat). In first grade, we review the beat tapping page, but then take it a step further and look at the rhythm of the song. It is great ta and titi practice. We play the rhythms on hand drums as we sing.

You can find slides for the song "Ho Ho Watanay" here. This file teaches loud/soft, lullaby, prepares and practices steady beat, prepares/practices rhythm of the words and ta/titi.

2) Children's Literature for Thanksgiving in the Music Room
I introduce the song "Ho Ho Watanay" with the book "Northwoods Cradle Song". I sing the song on the page turns following every page that reads "Sleep, little warrior, sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep." I have looked all over for a song or melody to go with this book from the Menominee tribe, but have not found one yet. Ho Ho Watanay is actually an Iroquois lullaby, but because of the theme of the book and song, I pair them together.

I used the book, "One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims" last week with kindergarten. They enjoyed comparing the lives of the pilgrims and Indians in the book. 

I love to use the "I know an Old Lady..." books. I have several of them and they may great "fill in the blank" books as Jo Kirk would call them. I sing most of the book, but give the students a special part to sing, in this case the "perhaps she'll die". Thank goodness she doesn't die in this book. She just inflates until she becomes a balloon in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Hopefully none of us eat that much over Thanksgiving! ;)

3) Pumpkin Patch Rhythm Compositions

I had to be gone a couple days this month, so I left this "Pumpkin Patch Rhythm Composition" activity for a few classes while I was gone. It was easy for them to do while I was away, gave them more practice writing and working with a specific set of rhythms. I had them do these compositions with a partner and then on a later day, they combined with another pair and taught the other pair their composition and created one long composition out of the two that was 16 beats. The group of four then performed them for the class when I was there, so I was able to use it as a composition and performance assessment and assess two different skills. Working with a partner and then teaching their composition to another pair was really neat to watch. I could tell that because they were writing, manipulating, and teaching it, they really "got it". 

You can find this Pumpkin Patch Composition lesson here.

4) Turkey Trot Rhythm Races

My kids love rhythm races. They are fun and competitive. I love that it gives me a chance to see which kids really are getting it. I divide the class into teams. My classes have about 25 kids, so I do five teams with 4-5 kids on each team.

The teams stand in lines next to their team color turkey. I read/clap/or play a rhythm and one player from each team races to the other end of the room. When they get there, they see piles with turkeys of their team's color. They must locate the correct rhythm and bring it back to their team. The first team to bring back the correct rhythm gets 2 points. If they bring back a correct rhythm, but they are not first, they get 1 point for their team. If they bring back an incorrect rhythm, they get 0 points and they have to go take it back because they will eventually need to find that rhythm.

(Photo shared from the classroom of Shelley Potter).

You can find this game here.

I hope you have enjoyed a peek at my week and some of the things I am doing right before Thanksgiving!

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