What do you like to do when you listen to music? Practice writing sentences by answering this question and more about music in this creative writing worksheet.

Welcome to 31 Days of Homemade Music! Today we will be continuing to make a case for why anyone can benefit from studying music. To find other posts in this series, click here. Ever wondered if music is just as effective a brain developer as, say, math or science? If you remember my post from […]

High Shoals Elementary School Music Blog, Oconee County GA, Orff Music Instruction

Discover how teaching improvisation to beginner piano students is easier than you think. Plus, download a free copy of TopMusicMag.

Introducing Do Re Mi to kids in a visual, fun way to help them understand the notes of the scale and piano. First musical theory lesson for babies and young kids.

Write for the NAfME Blog SEARCH & FILTER Search Category Subscribe to NAfME Notes Subscribe to NAfME Notes, our biweekly e-newsletter, to receive highlights from the blog and other NAfME news in your inbox. Subscribe Now Write for the NAfME Blog Interested in sharing your experience with the music education…

Music class is an active, engaging, and joyful experience! This is especially true when our musical activities are grounded in creative and intentional teaching strategies. One of the most important teaching strategies has to do with teaching the difference between steady beat and the rhythm of

15 Memes Only Art Teachers Will Understand Professional Practice % %

Welcome to 31 Days of Homemade Music! Today we will be continuing to make a case for why anyone can benefit from studying music. To find other posts in this series, click here. Ever wondered if music is just as effective a brain developer as, say, math or science? If you remember my post from […]

Here is my arrangement of Frere Jacques. This piece introduces a round and can also be used to practice eighth notes.

“We hear the terms ‘formative’ and ‘summative’ assessments all the time in schools. As educators, we learned about the differences while in college in our educati…

Atavism: the means by which suddenly any creature -- humans included -- can sprout physical traits that they thought they had abandoned millennia ago.

This is a fantastic way to teach rhythm notation, but it might make you hungry.

Singing rounds for the classroom ought to be easy and energetic. Haida, an Israeli song with only two lines, fits the bill! FREE DOWNLOAD

What are your top 5 best hits? Here's a fun way for any music lover to analyze their favorite songs.

Lean Forward Lean Backward - a song with actions and activities ready-made for your music class. Great to practice music aural & music theory.

Sarasponda

October 12, 2013 Fourth and fifth grade students are reviewing "rhythm" (the short and long patterns of the beat) in music class...

Song Index

Spring is one of my favorite times of year - each morning on my walk I hear birds singing and see rabbits hopping on fresh sprigs of green grass. And the flowers! Well, if you know me at all, you know how much I love flowers and especially irises. I have so many flowers planted around my house and particularly love the 20-something varieties of iris I currently have! This is a perfect rhyme and fingerplay for spring. Fingerplays are so underrated! Teach them to younger students as a fingerplay but bring them back to teach or reinforce rhythmic elements in first grade and as a canon experience for second grade, or add a So Mi or So La Mi melody, eventually adding in an ostinato or two. Transfer the rhyme and ostinati to non-pitched percussion, add timbre changes for each line and allow the students to decide how to perform it. For older students, use these as a basis for melodic improvisation or to walk the beat while clapping the rhythm or add a B Section with the names of egg layers - birds, fish, insects, turtles, platypus, echidna, reptiles, and lizards. Or have small groups of students create a movement story of one type of animal and perform for other groups to guess the animal. So many possibilities! For a better image, click here. Enjoy!

Song Index

Visit the post for more.

Ah Poor Bird

Pentatonic Songs

Fooba Wooba John

Lean Forward Lean Backward - a song with actions and activities ready-made for your music class. Great to practice music aural & music theory.

How music enters the brain, and what it does when it gets there.