Announcing Monday Music Manipulatives

I am always looking for new manipulatives for my music room - visuals, puppets, toys, anything that will capture the interest of my kids and hook into my song materials.

This Monday I will be hosting a Monday Music Manipulatives Link Up Party. Connect with new music teachers to share ideas and gain a few tricks for your teacher tool kit.

How to link up: write a blog post with a few ideas for manipulatives in the music room. If they are items you have made, please include instructions on how to make them for our classrooms. If it is something you have purchased, please let us know where you found it! Check back on Monday, 9/9/13 for clear instructions on how to join the linky party. Be sure to check out all the blogs that link up. I can't wait to get a bunch of new ideas!

Making Music More Interactive

Happy Thursday!

I found this picture on The Inspired Apple's Blog: http://theinspiredapple.blogspot.com/2013/08/aint-no-tired-like-teacher-tired.html

Wow! I sure am tired today! I ended up taking a double class of first graders today since they were using the gym to get pictures taken. What a workout!

Today I am linking up with Erin from Lovin' Lit for Thursday Throwdown.

So here is my spin on making music more interactive.

1. Projectable beat charts:

Students get to take turn point to the bee beats on the board. You can get everyone involved by having the class pat their nose, shoulders, knees, ect. while a special helper taps the bees on the board. I love to use cute pointers for my kids. They are so excited to come up and point.

Students can also have a student copy so everyone can point:

2. Puppets - Puppets make everything more interactive! Students love to sing to the puppets and they really love when THEY get to be the puppets. I use puppets for vocal exploration, pitch matching, singing games and stories. 

This puppet can be purchased through Folkmanis. All of their puppets are top quality! Click on the bee to visit their website.

3. Foam manipulatives

Sometimes I like to mix it up with the technology and manipulatives that are a little more tactile. These are foam pieces shaped like crowns that I use for keeping the steady beat with the song "Queen Queen Caroline".  Students can tap the crowns using the queen's wand while the class chants. I found the foam piece at my local Dollar Tree - just add magnets!

When we are ready to being working on rhythm as "the way the words go" I replace the crowns with split crowns for two sounds on a beat. I used another color to really emphasize the difference and to help students recognize the form.

What do you do to make your classroom more interactive?

Ideas for Organizing Your Music Room

Make sure you scroll down to the very end of this post or you will miss out on linking up with other fabulous music teachers!

Here are some ideas for classroom organization:

1. Velcro spots and circle

I bought my colored velcro from Hobby Lobby with coupons. You can only use the hook side (rough side). It sticks to the floor so well! The first day we talked about taking care of our room and our spots. I cut the velcro small enough that if they are sitting on it, it won't stick out, so they shouldn't play with it. If I notice someone who is playing with it I take a moment to say "Thank you to everyone who is sitting with their pockets on their velcro and not touching it! That really helps take care of our room!" and the student who was messing with it corrects their behavior without being singled out.

I love having a circle on my floor this year. It cuts out on all the time figuring out how to make the circle and gives us more time for making music! To make a circle, I took a plastic solo cup, punched a hole in the top and fed yarn through it. I taped the cup to the floor and the cup was the center of my circle. I used the yarn to help me go around and lay down the velcro. I laid down one color at a time to keep them evenly spaced.  

Board spots: In front of my board, I have three rows of velcro and these spots are numbered with permanant marker. Each student has an assigned board spot. This also helps transition to the circle. I can call "Pinks, go find a pink spot on the circle". That has also helped us mix a little better in the circle instead of being by our best friends or all the girls on one side of the circle and all the boys on the other side of the circle. 

2. Position Posters

Position posters: I  found these on a blog and modified them a bit to fit my needs by cutting off their labels and adding my own (the green). I changed the "group poster" (pink) to the reading corner and used a sharpie to draw a chair, book and hair for the teacher. You can  find these here: http://deborahkoakes.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/three-qs-of-perfect-circle-making/ They are perfect for labeling all of the areas in our room so that I can quickly direct kids where to go and they have a visual for what I want it to look like.

3. Music Rules

I made music rules that spell out MUSIC and coordinate with my music themed bulletin boards. These rules are available on my TPT store in a few different styles and come with a song for teaching each that is set to  a folk tune.

4. Reading corner

You may have read about my ugly record holder here. I painted it a pretty light blue and re-purposed it as a reading corner in my room to have a dedicated space to songtales.

 BONUS  5. Instrument Labels

I accidentally didn't change my printer setting to print to the edge, but I think doing that would get rid of the white border. These labels are available on my tpt store here. 

 

Now head on over to the linky party to link up with other music teachers to see what they are doing in their classroom:

Choral Music in the Elementary Music Room

I don't know about other music teachers, but picking program music has always been a big challenge for me. I probably do not do my program music in a very "Kodaly" way, but each year as my kids gain more literacy skills, I add more Kodaly influence to my programs and program prep.

A few thoughts on programs...

This may totally clash with your philosophy of what program music should be, and that's ok, but I believe that music to be performed by my upper elementary students in a program should be absolutely beautiful, expose students to reading from an octavo, and instill a love for choral music. Many of my students participate in area honor choirs and go on to sing in choir in middle school, so I want them to have experience reading and singing choral music, because it can be a bit overwhelming at first.

I usually do not do "themed" programs for the purpose of selecting the very best repertoire possible for my kids. I want to focus specifically on selecting music for my fifth graders in this post. My first year teaching I came across the part by part selections on the Carl Fischer/ BriLee website. This has been a HUGE life saver for me when selecting, rehearsing, and performing. They have recordings available to download for free with a full recording, an accompaniment track, and tracks for each vocal part. I can give the website to my students and they can listen and sing along at home. It is also a huge help to be because I do not have an accompanist for class or the performance, so this enables us to perform quality literature without the cost of buying a performance CD.


Click on the picture below to visit their website and click on the part by part section and select the voicing you would like.

If you would like to expose your students to choral music, but do not have the funds for an accompanist or performance CDs for each song, I highly recommend checking out the options on Carl Fischer and BriLee. 

When selecting pieces I may try to connect with a folk song that we have done by finding an arrangement of that song, or selecting literature that has a tone set they can read, or rhythms that are accessible for reading. I do some rote teaching with my choral music, but my kids just are not at the point where they can read it yet, but I do not want them to miss the opportunity to experience it.

This year I am also considering arranging some folk songs and adding Orff accompaniment, but that will involve moving about 20 Orff instruments to the high school where we perform. I will let you know what I end up doing.

How do you select your music for performances? Are you able to go at it from a Kodaly approach?

Also, for those of you who are secondary choral people, I'd love to hear your thoughts on selecting and teaching rep. for your choirs. 

Don't miss out on my choral singing word wall. It will be FREE on my TPT page until 9/1/13!