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 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!