In this music classroom....

I think we've all seen the popular printables about "In this classroom..." stating the expectations of the classroom or characteristics of the students. I changed it up a little bit, played around a bit in Photoshop and came up with this one:

Click here to download a full size copy.

I had it in one of my favorite color combinations (aqua, red and white) and it ended up looking patriotic....so I switched the colors around. Now it's a bit Dr. Seuss? I don't know. If you like it, feel free to download and use it! If you like it but want a copy in your school colors or classroom colors, contact me on Twitter @KellyParrish605 or leave me a comment.

If you think there is a very important adjective that describes the music-makers in your music class, let me know! There's always room for improvement.

'Tis the Season

Around this time of year, it's Nutcracker Season! Tchaikovsky's beloved music is studied and enjoyed year after year in music rooms all over the world. In my classes, it was always concentrated on first grade. However, I have used the music with other grade levels as review and I always included some cool performances of it in my annual singalongs in the past. These two are my recent favorites:

As for the first video, do I need to say much about Pentatonix? I love them and the kids go crazy over them. They are so amazingly talented! And for the second video, it is fascinating on a musical and a scientific level! The kids really enjoy this one as well.

As for other activities students could use when studying The Nutcracker, there are SO many great things out there already! Search on Pinterest and you'll find some wonderful units. While I have not usually have the class time in the past to go into major unit, I did think that a bingo game might be fun. It gives them something to listen for and gives some motivation to pay close attention to the details. There are five different pages you can print out. Feel free to make up your own rules as far as the "bingo" goes.

Just a screenshot....when you print, those annoying "you spelled these words from another language wrong" lines won't show up :)

By the way, if you haven't discovered Picmonkey yet, it's an easy-to-use web-based graphics site. I used it to make the candy cane frame and the Nutcracker clipart. (For this reason, this is another for personal use only.) I can't guarantee that some of those didn't come from my upgraded membership, but there are a lot of fun features on the free membership of the website. And did I mention it's easy to use?

Anyway, I made most of the answer squares educational references to the story, music and ballet but a couple are easy freebie "are you listening?" squares. :) Some of them require a couple written words and they may have to turn it over to the back for a bit more room.

Enjoy!

Nutcracker Bingo - Free for personal use

Snowmen in Kindergarten

As I sort of thought, the weather is......pretty much back to the normal low of 40's and high of mid 60's. Did you think I would say it was snowing? If you did, I bet you've never been here. :)

But it doesn't prevent us from continuing on with the snow theme in the music room. This Kindergarten favorite is one that I actually learned from my son about 6 years ago! Talk about the true oral tradition living on.....he learned it in his preschool class for their winter performance and came home excited to tell it to me. I hadn't actually heard it before and it was just too cute! (Anything from a 4 year-old is though!! Well, almost anything.)

I made this as a picture book (before I got my projector), we act it out, I have made masks (which I sell in my Etsy store), we do it as just the fingerplay.....whatever feels right. I did add one thing that makes it a great vocal practice for Kinder especially.....after each snowman melts, we say "OOOOoooooooo" in a high-low sliding voice and we "melt" down to the ground (or use our hands if we are seated) to reinforce high to low. That gives us a moment to pause and think about how many are left and they are usually very eager to tell you how many the answer. (I always play innocent, though there are some days I truly can't remember which one we left off on......) 

The Powerpoint is animated to melt each snowman if you're not too click-happy and I've checked it a million times.....hopefully everything saved properly.

Five Little Snowmen PowerPoint Show

I was hoping to add in one more thing that I shared around this time last year, but the website is changing up. I found the book Snowmen at Night on a great online website called "We Give Books" but it does not seem to the there anymore. So instead, here's a link to it on Amazon and what the cover looks like:

This book is great for movement! These crazy snowmen go on an adventure all over town, sliding and gliding around.....perfect for the kids imitate. It's a delightful story. And I can't leave this post without mentioning Frosty! I love this book version:

What are your favorite snowman activities in the music room? What can you think of for the older grade levels?

Snail, snail....I mean, Snowflake snowflake!

As you can see, I'm trying to make up for all the blogging that I haven't done over the last few months and I'm on a roll! This is a perfect activity for these winter months and it's a familiar melody to the little ones.

I learned Snowflake, Snowflake a long time ago and I'm trying to remember who taught it to me! I'm going to have to ask a few friends from my Kodály levels if they remember learning this song from one of our teachers or if I learned it from a colleague. I will update if I get some answers. (I did Level I in 2001 where I probably would have learned this song, so my memory is fuzzy. I don't have a master copy either so it must have just been one of those songs learned in a lesson. Maybe someone made it up. Again, I'll have to ask around!)

The lyrics and solfa are on the slides in the activity, but basically, it's the same melody and rhythm as Snail, Snail with these words:

It's simple, but fun and catchy and the kids love this one! We play a movement game of sorts where we float and drift around like lovely, gentle snowflakes....at the end, of course, we freeze! The most frozen snowflake gets to come to the front and choose the next frozen snowflake and then go back into the game. There's no elimination....it's just fun movement and singing. We don't usually sing it very fast....maybe that's because I'm used to soft, gentle snowfall here in Texas. :) Though I will admit, if I feel like a particular class can handle it, we will have a blizzard in the forecast and sing faster for a different tempo practice. Usually the blizzard passes over pretty quickly though.

If you have a projector but not a SmartBoard, this one is especially for you. I chose PowerPoint for this activity because of the animations and action settings that I needed to use....Google Slides just doesn't have the options I needed. I have basically set it up to give an assessment for reading la, so and mi on the staff and it won't advance until they get the answer (out of three options) correct.

So head over to the link below and download it! I put the activity directions and leading questions in the slide notes at the bottom. If you read over those and then press Play to practice it, I think it'll be pretty clear. I don't write all directions directly on my slides because I don't want to just read from the screen. :)

Snowflake, Snowflake Activity Link

Unsplash!

Have you heard of Unsplash? If you haven't.....you're welcome! :) Seriously though, it's a great collection of beautiful, high-resolution photographs. As the front page says, they are FREE to do whatever you want. You really don't find those words on a website very often, if ever!

I love this website so much because kids need real-life experiences and real-life references as much as possible. For example, have you noticed how many train songs we sing? I realized a few years ago that the only train that a lot of my kindergarteners knew about was Thomas the Tank engine or the Little Engine that Could! Cartoon trains that talk! I always had to pull up a video of a real train well before before playing The Little Train of the Caipira as a listening example. Otherwise, they had no idea what they were supposed to be hearing. Some of the toys and cartoons out there do a good job with using the real sound effects, but there's nothing like seeing a real train and hearing the sounds it makes all at the same time.

I like to use real photographs whenever possible for this very reason. While browsing Unsplash today, I finally completed a project I've wanted to do for awhile! This picture inspired me:

I know it won't make sense, but the project is for Rocky Mountain....

Click here for a link to a set of Google slides with the lyrics and some staff work for the refrain. Feel free to copy the link to your Google Drive and leave me some comments about it!

The whole song is great for preparing/practicing the pentatone and half note. So we work on the beat, the rhythm, the solfa, anything and everything.....seriously, this song is always a hit.

By the time we are really getting into this song, the students are also talking about landforms in their classrooms. They get so excited that they can tell me what a mountain, valley and ocean is in formal terms! A retired friend of mine (and brilliant teacher!), Caroline, taught me some really fun movements and an additional verse:

Tiny island, tiny island, tiny island small

When you're on that tiny island, there's no shopping mall.

Does that picture make sense now? I usually confess that I'm pretty sure the island verse doesn't belong to the original folk song.....and that we should write some more. With older kids, you could even have them type their verse into their own Google Slide and collaborate together. And with a search function on Unsplash, you might even help them find a picture to add in to the verse. (I wouldn't necessarily suggest letting the kids go through the website themselves; I don't think there is anything wildly inappropriate but there are some swimsuit pictures, etc. that might not be the most appropriate for grade school.) They have always come up with some really creative verses! They really get into it.

By the way, let me know what you find on Unsplash!

Anchor Chart #2

Another day, another free anchor chart! This is a simple one outlining dynamics:

Again, for personal use only, please! :) Click here if you'd like to download a large version already formatted to 11"x17" to print at your local office supply store.

Anchor Chart Freebie

With larger-scale printing getting cheaper and cheaper, nice anchor charts are all the rage on Pinterest it seems! Sure, you could do the old-fashioned, authentic "write and draw your own on a flipchart" but for those of us who despise our own handwriting, this is a daunting task. I don't mind jotting notes on the classroom board, but if it's going to go on my wall long-term and it's in my handwriting, it's going to be typed up and printed out nicely!

I spent a lot time of gathering, admiring and borrowing ideas from here and there and finally put a few together in my own personal styles. My first priority was a chart comparing beat and rhythm. For some reason, this has always been tricky. These words seem to be blend together in a lot of kids' brains after a while. Unless the student has a solid memory for the definitions, they seem to always be looking around for the answer or how exactly to explain it.

So my version is below.

If you'd like to download it and print it out yourself, click here. (For personal use only, please!) This one is formatted for 11x17 printing at Staples for under $2 if I remember correctly.

Enjoy!