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Rockin' Resources and a Cyber SALE

I am going to let you in on a little HUGE secret! Tomorrow there is going to be a SITE WIDE TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS SALE!


Ok, who doesn't love a big sale? I have sooo many things on my wishlist (79 to be exact) ranging from great music products, to fonts, and clip art. It won't all make it to my cart, but some of it will, and I am definitely looking forward to saving money and supporting other teachers with my purchases. Yes, I will probably make more than one purchase before Tuesday is over.

In honor of this site wide sale, I am linking up with Amy Abbott from Music a la Abbott to share some "Rockin' Resources" that you should check out during the sale.



First, I will share about a resource I am super excited about that is brand new in my TpT store. I created a Stocking Stuffers rhythm practice game that you can project on your SMART board or, if you are like me, onto your white board.


Students can throw a Kooshball to select it if your board is interactive, or you can click from your computer on the stocking they pick/hit with the ball.


Once they click on a stocking, they are taken to a rhythm pattern for that stocking. 




The student has to read the rhythm pattern correctly to find out what is inside their stocking.

If they get it correct, they are taken to this page: 

If they get it incorrect they are taken to this page, and the game continues with a new team or student taking a turn.


I plan to use this in the next few weeks as an individual assessment in several of my grades as a quick assessment while we are in the middle of prepping for our All School Christmas Sing Along

I have also included a version that uses just stick notation without note heads. Use whichever version will work best for you and your kiddos.

The bundle set includes a file for each of these rhythm concepts. They are also available individually, if you just need one or a few concepts:

- ta and titi
- ta rest
- half note
- tiri-tiri
- ti-tiri
- tiri-ti
- syncopa
- tam ti

This next file is on my wishlist for the cyber sale. I missed it during one of the $2 Tuesdays because life got busy and I forgot to check out!

This one comes from Cori Bloom at Rhythm and Bloom!

The Snow Is Dancing, Music Listening & Movement Lesson



It looks like it includes a lot of great ideas for listening and movement. I love the fake snowflakes that her kiddos are dancing with here, and who doesn't love the music of Claude Debussy!

You can find this file here.

Although I do like to stock up on things to use in my music room, site wide sales are also a time when I really plan ahead for the projects I want to make and go crazy buying clip art, fonts, borders and backgrounds for all of the resources I make.

During the Teacher Appreciation Sale I picked up this Font Bundle from KG FONTS. It includes every font she has ever made and ever will make. It was probably my biggest TpT purchase ever and I was a little leary telling my hubby that I spent $200 on fonts, but I have used them in every single resource I have made since May.

Commercial Font License- ALL FONTS


Not sure that I am ready to pay for more fonts, but I found this font package that I has been sitting in my wishlist for a few months now.

Commercial Font License - ALL THE FONTS


Want to save a little bit extra on your TpT purchase? If you have made TpT purchases in the past, you can leave (thoughtful) feedback on your purchases and earn TpT credits. I LOVE using the TpT credits on top of site wide sales because then I save even more and really feel like I am getting a steal of a deal! I got a LOT of TpT credits from that first font package! You can find out more about TpT credits here.

I hope you have a fun time shopping on Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) during the site wide sale. Don't forget to put in the code, "TPTCYBER" at checkout to get the additional % off!

Things to be Thankful For & "Fill Your Plate"

I have so much to be thankful for. I am so thankful for my family. My husband is my best friend. He "gets" my job since he is a music teacher too, and I am so proud of the things he accomplishes with his students.
I am thankful for his new job which has brought him closer to home. The last few years he had been traveling almost an hour to and from work.

I am thankful for my sweet daughter, Ellie. She is truly the light in my life. She is full of spunk and has always had quite the personality. It is so exciting to see her grow. My little turkey:



I am thankful for a job where I get to make music with children every day. There are times where I am playing a singing game with the kids, and I stop and think, "I am getting paid for this!" It is a blessing to do what you love.

I am thankful that I stumbled upon Amy Abbott's teaching blog almost two years ago. She has so many great teaching ideas. From there, I also found out all about Teachers Pay Teachers, and decided to take the plunge and put some of my resources on the site. I couldn't believe it when I made a sale on there. Someone actually wants to use my resources with their kids???? AMAZING! The blessings just continue to come. Through TpT, the work that I create to use in my classroom has dramatically improved over the last two years. My students are more engaged in the songs that I use, and love coming to music. 

The online friendships I have made with other music teachers who blog and/or sell on teachers pay teachers. Their guidance and feedback has really helped me to make the best resources I can to use with my students, and I am just humbled that other music teachers want to use them in their classrooms too.

To show my appreciation and thankfulness for some of the teachers who have helped me this last year and to anyone who follows our pages, I am excited to bring you a chance to fill up your plate with some great Christmas and Winter resources for the music room at a huge discount. Each of these resources pictured below will be 50% off this Wednesday, November 26th through Thanksgiving Day. Each of these fantastic music teachers has been an inspiration, a mentor, and a friend to me this past year. I am lucky to have them in my life, even though I have not met most of them in person, and my students benefit greatly from the help they give me in creating my resources and the amazing resources and ideas that I have found in their stores and blogs to use in my classroom.

Click on the picture to download a PDF with clickable links to each resource.

I am offering my newest bulletin board set at 50% off Wed.-Thurs. "Snow is falling into place, on a line or in a space". I love the way this board looks in my room and that I can probably leave it up in my room through Feb. or March depending on the weather this year!

Below are links to their great blogs or Facebook pages as well so that you can follow and learn from them too!

Here are the teachers who are giving thanks with me and helping me celebrate!

Linda McPherson from McPherson's Music Room (a fellow Kansas native!) Linda creates amazing resources for practicing musical concepts. My students loved using one of her sol-mi resources last Christmas!

Sara Bibee from Music With Sara Bibee - Sara creates AMAZING Composer of the Month sets! If you haven't seen them, you must!

Brittany De Laruelle from Making Music Memories - Brittany creates lots of song files that I love. They are very time consuming to make, so I love it when I find a song I haven't created a PowerPoint for yet. My students loved her Daisy Chain file this year!

Tracy King from Mrs. King's Music Class - I have never met Tracy in person (yet!) but through her candid Facebook posts, I feel like I know her so well. She has a daughter who is about a year older than Ellie and she is always posting the adorable things her daughter says. She is very well know as "THE Bulletin Board Lady" and I usually feel sheepish every time I post a bulletin board she, but she is always a sweetheart and tells me when I do a good job creating a board. Her "stamp of approval" is huge to me!

Aileen Miracle from Mrs. Miracle's Music Room - I actually got to meet Aileen this past summer and she is a huge sweetheart. She also has a daughter who is really close to Ellie's age. She teaches Kodaly Level 1 and I have learned so much from her rhythmic and melodic sets on TpT. Many of her sets offer ideas for new literature that was not a part of my folk song collection going through Levels training at WSU, so that is always really exciting when I get to stumble upon a new song to teach a concept.

Tina Jones from Totally Tuned In Teacher - Tina has such a big heart. She helped me through a difficult time that I experienced this last year with my dad's health because she too, had gone through the same kind of thing. I am so glad that my dad is now much, much better, but her sharing her experiences with non Western medicine and how it totally changed her life, helped me to accept and be open to alternative doctors who helped my dad so much. Her blog is so fun. You must check it out!

Amy Abbott from Music a la Abbott - Amy is the manipulative queen. I am always on her blog looking for new, tangible ideas to use in my class. Sometimes kids just need something in their hands to feel and manipulate to get the concepts, and her blog is packed full with great ideas. I have even invited her out to KS to present for KMEK in April! :)

David Row from Make Moments Matter - I stumbled into David in Kansas City this summer by chance! I LOVE his blog. So fun. So creative. He is going through Orff training and just completed his level 2 training this past summer. We collaborated on a Kodaly/Orff blog post this summer, and I am always interested to see what he writes.

Jena Hudson from Sew Much Music - Jena is one crafty teacher. When I first saw her blog, I wondered why it was not "Sol" Much Music LOL. NOW, I understand her huge love for all things crafty. She has helped me out with some bulletin board designs in the past and her classroom looks like a dream. Be sure to check out the giveaway happening on her blog! She is giving away a TpT gift card, some of her winter resources and my newest bulletin board set. (Ends 11/25/14)

I hope you enjoy checking out all their sites and "Fill Up Your Plate" this Thanksgiving with some great resources to use with your students!

Winter Bulletin Boards for the Music Room

This week we got a about 3 inches of snow here in Wichita, and so I thought it was probably time I trade out my sailboat themed bulletin boards for something else.

I love to have a line/spaces bulletin board up in my room for my students to refer to, especially when we work on recorders and Orff instruments.

So I came up with "Snow is falling into place, on a line or in a space".


I envisioned snowflakes falling to the ground with the letter names in them. I went to Hobby Lobby and Target to pick up some extras for my board. I got a 60 ft. roll of silver Christmas ribbon 50% off at Hobby Lobby along with the adorable gray fabric I used for the background. This is my first fabric backed bulletin board, and I LOVE it. A little more expensive, but I can use it again and again and not have to re-cut it. I love this pattern and think it is really pretty and calming. I also picked up an icicle garland that I ended up using along the top. I also purchased pre-made Poms for the corners. Each pom is actually half a pom. I cut them in half, and stapled where I cut.

At Target, I grabbed a bag of "glitter snow blanket" to be the bottom border.

I created all of the text and snowflake letters on the computer, printed, laminated and cut out. I loved the different fonts that I got to use by doing this and that the colors were an exact color match to the snowflake clip art I used.
For the side and top border, I had to triple layer the ribbon. I love the way it looks though as opposed to the traditional bulletin board border. 
The lines of the staff are party streamers. I bought one roll several years ago and have gotten many, many boards out of it for only $0.99 or so! I use tape first to make sure the spacing is good before I staple them down, and I use some of the text to cover staples.

Want this bulletin board in your music room? Grab it here:

I am still trying to decide what to do on my other two bulletin boards. For now, they are still sporting sail boats. Let me know if you have a brilliant snow themed idea for my other boards below! 



Monday Music Manipulatives {Cotton Balls & Bingo Counters}

Welcome to another Monday Music Manipulatives!

I am so excited to share this neat idea that I found from my good friend, Erin Johnson, on her Facebook page. Erin went through all three levels of Kodaly with me at Wichita State University. :)

She had been working on preparing ta rest and was actually doing dictation with it, without labeling it. 
She had found two sided bingo counters and used them to make ta's and ti-ti's. 


Then for the beats with no sound, she passed out some cotton balls, and the students were able to dictate on which beat they heard the piece of silence. I love this idea! Cotton balls are cheap, and fun for tactile learners. 

Today she used the beat charts and left the hearts where they heard a piece of silence blank. They numbered the beats, showed which beat was "empty" and labeled it as silent. She then presented the ta rest notation, moved right to flashcards to practice and on they went!

A big thank you to Erin Johnson for sharing her pictures and letting me blog about her idea!

Do you have a fun manipulative you want to share? Link up below! Here's how:
1) Save my "Monday Music Manipulatives" image from the top of my blog
2) Insert it into your blog post and hyperlink it to this post
3) Blog about your own music manipulatives 
4) Copy your blog link and link up below!