2, 4, 6, 8 and the Featured Item of the Week- click to see!

Thank you for visiting my blog! For those of you who are new to my blog or Teachers Pay Teachers store, every week I feature one of the items in my store. In the past, I have advertised the what the item is on my blog and on my Facebook page. This week, I am changing it a little so you have to click on the picture to see what the sale item is. If you take advantage of this sale, please take a moment after reviewing the product or using it in your classroom and leave feedback on the product page on Teachers Pay Teachers. This helps me to know that you found it to be accurate, a valuable tool to your teaching toolbox, and hopefully that it saved you some prep time and that your kids LOVED it! If you find any errors please let me know so that I can fix them. If this ever occurs, I almost always have the item fixed that same day! By leaving feedback you also earn credits towards any future purchases on TpT! It's a great way to save on excellent resources created by teachers for teachers. 

Don't forget to enter my April Giveaway to win any item your choice of any item from my store. The winner will be drawn on May 1st. 

I just finished some really adorable slides for the song "2, 4, 6, 8." This song is awesome for teaching rhythm as the "way the words go" or in your prepare/present/practice of ti-ti.

Here's a preview of some of the slides and student worksheets:

Title Page

Lyrics

Icons for steady beat- I use these before I introduce the heart beat, if I am preparing steady beat.

Lyrics added: 

Now with heart beats:

Heartbeats plus lyrcis.

Icons for "the way the words go", rhythm, and visually preparing ta and ti-ti.

I have also come up with the following student worksheets that are great for tracking the steady beat, and pre-reading ta and titi with "long and short". Print one for each student or print and laminate a class set to reuse. 

"2, 4, 6, 8" Is available on my store here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Preparing Steady Beat: Johnny Works With One Hammer

I can't wait until next year when I will see Pre-K and Kindergarten (woohoo!), but my first grade babies this year are working so hard! I am getting very close to presenting steady beat with them (probably next week). When I was in my level 1 training, my teacher Jo Kirk had these wonderful hammers with bells inside that we used to tap the steady beat. I couldn't afford to buy them and don't currently have the time or know-how to make them (although that is on my list), but last year at Target, I did find some hammers in the dollar bins so I picked up about 25 or so to use with a few of our favorites for preparing and practicing steady beat.

They sure do take up a lot of storage space, but they are awesome to have!

I first pull them out when using "Johnny Works With One Hammer." First we sing the song as an action song. 

After we know it pretty well, we form a circle and I go over procedures for the hammers, what it's resting position looks like, and what happens if you don't take care of the hammer (you will have to put it away and just use your hand!). 

We pass them out so that everyone has a hammer, and we sing the song again tapping the floor:

Mending our shoes:

And tapping our neighbor's knees, which they love! 

Then we move back to our seats and I put up the hammer icons on the board. I usually find that my beat visuals are the most successful after the kids know the song really well, so the visual preparation is usually the last thing I do. I use one of the hammers or a pointer to tap the beats while the students pat their knees.

Once they get the hang of this and know how I move from one line to the next, I invite them to come up and try to be the pointing maestro: 

(Notice, my projector screen is too high, I think I am going to put in a work order this summer to have my projector point down so that I can use the board and not the pull down screen. There's lots of times that I would like to write on the slides and the screen doesn't work too well for that, plus it's a little high for my kids. When my kids point to this one, I erase the top two lines of hammers and say that when they get to the end, they go back and do it again. So we learn repeats early! :)

Sometimes I have my students who are not pointing at the board point to their own beat sheet or play "the hammers" on their rhythm sticks.

My hammer beat sheet is available for FREE on my TpT page - click here!

Steady Beat and Ta/ Ti-ti Student Sheets

I am always looking for quick meaningful ways of assessing my students. One super easy way of seeing if your kids are ready for the presentation of steady beat is to use beat tracking charts. When I pull out a beat tracking chart during the prepare stage, I never label it as the "steady beat". I simply say "help pat our knees while I point to these pictures of the snails" 

 or "Watch me point to the trains as they leave the station!" 

I call their attention to how I point from left to right and where I go when I get to the end of the first line (the beginning of the second line). All of these things help or reinforce what the classroom teachers are doing to teach these young ones how to read.

After they have watched me point lots of times over a period of time, and they seem like they are able to keep the beat in their laps, I ask other students to use my pointers to help us follow the trains. They all want a turn to use the fancy pointer and be the leader and so I usually have to spread it over several class periods so everyone can get a turn. While one student is pointing at the white board, the rest of the class can watch and pat, play classroom percussion instruments like the sand blocks or rhythm sticks or they could practice pointing at their own beat chart (like my student beat charts above). 

After we have labeled the steady beat, I use heart beat charts for a while to reinforce the terminology:

These heart beat charts from my beat charts packet on TpT. It includes hearts and a variety of other clip art to go along with songs from your folk song collection.

 Available here!

When practicing, student beat charts make for a fast assessment. I can walk down each row while we sing and watch to see if students are able to keep the beat by pointing to the icons. 

After I present ta and ti-ti I use a student sheet like this so that they can practice writing the rhythms on each beat. I tell them that each bar is one beat.

I could even have them write the rhythms to a new or familiar song without telling them the title using my dictation sheets:

These student sheets for beat and rhythm (ta & titi) are available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store here.

This set is 32 pages and includes beat and rhythm pages for the following songs:

Apple Tree
Bee Bee Bumblebee
Bounce High Bounce Low
Engine Engine Number Night
I Climbed Up the Apple Tree
Lucy Locket
Queen Queen Caroline
Rain Rain Go Away
See Saw Up and Down
Snail, Snail
Starlight, Starbright

Plus four pages for dictation/mystery song.

I have also added the student rhythm writing worksheet for Bounce High Bounce Low as a freebie in my store. Click here.

Just one more thing: I hit a personal goal yesterday selling my 100th item on TpT. To celebrate, I will throw a 15% off sale- TODAY ONLY!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Featured Item of the Week: La Bundle

I have started doing a featured item of the week in my store. For that week only the featured item will be 20% off. This is the biggest percent that TpT will let us take off of our items, so it's a great time to grab it if it's a product you've been eyeing.

This bundle of songs and resources for teaching "la" contains:

PDF of slides for
-Naughty Kitty Cat
-Snail Snail
-Johnny's It
-Bounce High, Bounce Low
-Lucy Locket
-Ickle Ockle

All are set up for use during prepare/present/practice to allow you to use them however it works best for your concept plan.


I have also included a powerpoint of the Solfa  Street.

Repertoire list for La Songs

Hand Sign Posters for mi, so, and la