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?

Freebies: Vocal warmups

I recently upgraded to the Royale membership for PicMonkey. I normally don't bother with upgrading on sites like that (I'm fairly adept with Photoshop in the first place) but the website is just too easy and the graphics are so cute and just my style. Plus, I can access it at school to make all kinds of graphics and backgrounds for my PPTs and such. The 30-day free trial didn't hurt either!

So I thought I'd pass along something that I made after playing around with this website. My kindergarteners love vocal rollercoasters. They love to play teacher by using my pointers and leading the class to follow wiggly lines on the board that move in high, medium and low curves and loops. It's great practice to get their voices moving. Since it's winter (well, the closest thing to winter we've got here in Texas), I came up with Frosty's Silly Snowballs. Here's some screenshots from the file:

(Speaking of Frosty, I am now using online books on this great website called We Give Books! Frosty the Snowman is available, as well as a cute story called Snowmen At Night. This one is particularly good for movement! I am trying to find the Twitter friend that posted this useful info so I can give her credit, but I can't find her name or the post I favorited at this moment. I'll update it if I can locate it!)

If you'd like some vocal rollercoasters that will work all year long, here's a bird flying in various paths to his tree:

 

I hope your students enjoy these as much as mine have!