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Getting Ready for the First Day of School {Music Rules}

You know the school year is fast approaching when you begin to have the back to school dreams! I've been having school-related dreams the past few nights, and I am ready to just get past the anticipation.

Last year I was actually on maternity leave for the first few weeks of the school year, so even though I treated my first day back like the first day of school, it wasn't quite the same.

I am going into my fourth year teaching and my third year at my current school. I feel like each year I do a better job of starting the school year off the right way.

Every year I take a look at my class rules and every year I have made changes.

I have seen a lot of pins on pinterest with the rules spelling out MUSIC, and thought that was cute and may help the kids remember them better, so I tried to come up with things that I felt would be meaningful in my room.

Here's what I came up with:

M- Make good choices
U- Use kind words
S- Show Respect (to classmates, teacher, and the music)
I- Involve yourself
C- Care for our room and instruments

I put a copy of my Music Rules Posters on my TPT page. They come in owls:


Like this:

Or birds like this: 
I also have included a bird version like the owl one above, as it will use less ink to print than the polka dots. (All three styles are included in the zip file)

I have not ever really thought to include "respecting the music" before. I think that will be interesting to talk with the kids about on the first day.

Now, I KNOW that spending a bit of time on your rules and procedures that first day/week/month is SO important for a successful year, but I always feel so BORED talking AT the kids about rules. I always want to get through it quickly and then jump into the music. To give our rules a little more attention this year, I came up with a song for each rule using the melody of a folk tune.

For example, for "Involve Yourself" I came up with this text set to "A Sailor Went to Sea".


The PDF of these Music Rules Songs is included in the poster set above in my store. How much time do you spend going over rules and procedures the first day? What creative ways have you come up with to introduce them to your kids in a way that sticks?

Check back soon for another installment of Getting Ready for the First Day of School with lesson ideas.

3 comments:

  1. Love the ideas of the songs with the rules. I have similar rules in my classroom and on my TpT store (http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Music-Class-Rules-Posters-Printable-289575) but the songs are truly genius! Ill be buying them tomorrow during our sale! Thx!

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  2. Thank you so much! Yours are really cute too! I'm sure you could modify the songs if you wanted to use them for the classroom rules you already had. Thanks for sharing! :)

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  3. I bought your water color versions of these, they are so beautiful and the songs are great!

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