First year elementary music teachers face a lot of difficulties-- this is how to get ready for your first year!

Preparing for Your First Elementary Music Teaching Job. Organized Chaos. Top 5 suggestions to help you get ready over the summer for your first elementary music job.

Music theory worksheets are valuable tools for individuals who are learning or studying music. These worksheets provide structured exercises that focus specifically on note values. With a range of activities and exercises tailored to different skill levels, music theory worksheets help students grasp the concept of note values and their significance in creating rhythm and melodic patterns. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced musician, these worksheets are designed to enhance your understanding of note values and improve your musical performance.

Five fun and action-filled circle games to practice rhythm, pitch, and more with your elementary music students.

Do you have a favorite rhythm game or activity to use in your music lessons? Rhythm is something that always needs review, so you can never have too many

How to teach rhythm in elementary music class for first year general music teachers. We're going step by step through how to teach rhythm!

I know it can be hard to think about going back to work when you're enjoying a relaxing winter break snuggled on the couch under a blanket, so today I thought I'd share all of my top tools and ideas to make your life easier as you head back to school, from calendars and organizational tools to lesson ideas and management tips. Hopefully this will help you be able to focus on the joy of seeing your students again and less on the dread of returning to a pile of work! 1. Lesson Ideas for January For me January actually kinda plans itself. I always focus on reviewing all the main concepts I introduce in the beginning of the year- rhythm and pitch concepts in particular- and include lesson material centered around new year's celebrations and winter themes. I promise you, all of these ideas have been big hits with my students year after year and they are highly effective for reinforcing and learning key concepts. And if you want a little extra help putting all the lessons together with each grade's plans written out and all the materials put together for you, you can grab the January curriculum set here and check it off your list in one click! 2. Behavior Management Reset If you had a tough time with difficult/ disruptive behaviors in any of your classes at the beginning of the year it can make it particularly difficult to think about going back (I know because I've been there). Just know that it is never too late to implement new procedures or systems to help your classes run more smoothly and help foster a positive classroom environment! If you left for winter break feeling dissatisfied or discouraged about your classroom management for one or all of your classes, here are my top recommendations for procedures and systems to implement midyear and hit the reset button, both general strategies and ideas to address specific issues. If you want to set up any of these systems quickly without having to make visuals and materials from scratch, here are the posters and visuals I use ready to print and go! 3. Organization I know for me, January is when I get the urge to organize, purge, and streamline everything! Here are my favorite organization ideas for the classroom, planning, and home life to help get your life in order and take away so much stress! And of course if there are 2 things that I think play the biggest role in relieving stress and keeping me from dropping all the balls I have in the air, it's my planner and my K-6 general music curriculum. Trust me, if you are really serious about making your life easier to focus on what matters most, those are the two biggest "bang for your buck" things you can get. I hope you find something here to help make back to school a little less intimidating and a little more exciting. If there's something else you're feeling anxious about or just wanting to improve that you don't see an answer for here, let me know in the comments and let's talk!

There are so many ways to open a class musically. Just like our morning routine sets the tone for our day as teachers, the opening activities of your music class set the tone for the rest of the lesson. We want those activities to be: Musical Engaging Purposeful

Looking for engaging, musical games to play with your students? Here are a few of my favorite games and activities for elementary music classes, children's choirs, and elementary group classes.

I love using body percussion activities, so I am sharing some teacher tips and ways to use them in your classes.

Fruit Canon (Mango Mango Mango)

These winter songs for kids are the perfect way to get kids singing about all things snow while moving and dancing at the same time.

Learn all about classroom management for elementary music teachers and take control of your general music classroom today!

My 15-Minute Music Lesson Freebies are some of the most popular here at Music in Our Homeschool. See links to all of them here.

A simple arrangement of the popular sea shanty "Wellerman" for barred instruments and percussion. In D minor. Enjoy! :)

Check out this post for ten great music activities for elementary students set to iconic music by composer John Williams.

Fun Holiday music and movement activities for complete music lessons in grades K-3. Holiday music activities for the elementary music classroom.

Check out this post for creative and exciting ways to add scarves into your music activities. Also, find some specific scarf music examples.

Kindergarten students love using instruments! Here are 5 tried and true rhythm activities to get your little ones engaged in music class.

I'm having a hard time believing that it's December!!! First, we went to Disneyworld for Thanksgiving so it doesn't feel to me like we've had that holiday yet. Second, it's SO WARM here in Colorado. In fact, many of the days that we were in Florida it was hotter here at home! But, the show must go on and I must accept this is actually December, right?!! So, I'm teaming up with my friend Aileen Miracle of Mrs. Miracle's Music room to share some things we're doing in our classroom this month. I do have some traditions that I do in my class every year that I love to keep from year to year and I thought I would share some of them with you, as well as some of the new things we're doing this year. The first is the holiday version of Bow, Wow, Wow, called Ho Ho Ho. If you don't know the song or dance, it's really sweet and the kiddos eat it up! Formation: single circle, with all students facing a partner. Action: Phrase 1: pat partner's hands three times (on the text, "Ho, ho, ho!" Phrase 2: pretend to be looking at Santa Claus Phrase 3: trade place with partner (I have them place their hands on each other's hands or hold hand. Phrase 4: pat partner's hands three times and jump a half-turn on the rest so that they are facing a new partner. I love doing this with my first graders and I've also done it with my kinders, as well as my 2nd graders (for 2nd grade it's a great prep for re in that nice descending line of mi-re-do at the end. For the firsties, it's great for rhythm and for my kinders it gets them up and moving in a single circle with partners. With the kinders I start with one partner and model the dance as the rest of the class sits down. Then we add the jump turn at the end. With that the student that was my partner and I both have a new partner. This cumulatively goes until the whole class is up and moving. If there's an even number of students I set out so that they all have a partner. The next activity that I LOVE teaching my students each year are the dances to Jingle Bells. Here are my 5th graders from last year performing a concentric circle dance: I also do a dance with my littler students that is very similar, using a parachute. They all hold onto the outside of the parachute. On the verses they go with their right foot "heel, toe, heel, toe- slide, slide, slide slide (to the right)." Then they do the same thing to the left and then repeat the whole sequence. On the chorus, they touch their toes three times, touch their knees three times, touch their waist three times (all while holding onto the parachute), then lift the parachute over their head. I call a color and students holding that color turn in place. As they get better at it I do let them run under the parachute and switch places with the person across from them. Speaking of parachute, here's another activity that I do with the Trepak from The Nutcracker: We've been known to throw plush snowballs and other fun things on the parachute and bounce them off... it's great fun! To keep students reading, writing and practicing I'm diving into a few of my sets. Here's my 2nd graders reading "Reindeer Flying Lesson" PDF from this set, while adding body percussion and movement: And here's my 3rd graders practicing ti-tika via part work with my Nutcracker Rhythms Game that is in my Christmas Around the World set: Speaking of the Christmas Songs Around the World, we were using some of the games and songs from that set today when my 5th graders recalled learning "Caga Tio" last year and they got the biggest kick out of it. If you don't know, it's a Catalonian song in which the children feed the Yule long nugget and cover it with a blanket during the holidays and on Christmas Eve they sing a song while they strike the log with a stick. If they did a good job taking care of the log, feeding it and keeping it warm with the blanket, the log will have "pooed" gifts, which are left under the blanket. There's actually a recording of Nora Jones singing this song. The boys think this video is a riot! And then you really have to watch this little, they're singing a different version of the song: And with Star Wars coming out with a new movie we're also doing RHYTHM WARS!!! My kids LOVE these and I know they are as excited as me about the new movie: My son and I actually have tickets to go see it on December 14th, the night before it opens. We think we're pretty cool, lol! I hope that December brings you a lot of joy and good times in your classroom! If you're looking for some easy, fun go to games, check out my Reindeer games: And you want to make planning easy, grab this set that has games for the whole year round! Have a GREAT week everyone!

15 Stretchy Band Music and Movement Favorites from Bear Paw Creek Customers Back in December I had fun in our Bear Paw Creek Facebook Group showing

Origins of the cup song It’s a craze that has swept over schools everywhere and contrary to popular belief, the […]

We've all been there: one class is ahead of the rest of the grade level, it's the last day before a vacation, you're stressed/ tired/ sick and can't think straight to teach a regular lesson, it's a weird schedule day and the kids are spinning in circles, there's a last-minute change and you can't do the lesson you had planned... Whatever the reason, we all have days when we need to step out of our regularly-scheduled sequenced curriculum and do something different for one class period. Sure, you could throw on a movie or pull out some worksheets. But those types of classes can result in lots of behavior difficulties (and no wonder, the students are usually bored!). Here are my favorite ways to use those "one-off" class periods in meaningful musical ways. These ideas are ones that don't require too much thinking on my part, don't require advance planning to set up, can be done with large or small groups, and keep students engaged for an entire class period. 1. instrument merry go round I actually use this activity as a part of my regular "curricular" lessons as well, but it's a good one to pull out when I want everyone to stay focused and engaged but I know they're going to be antsy. I have every student pick out one instrument (usually I limit their options to small percussion on specific shelves in my room) and bring it to sit in a circle on the floor. Then I tell them to play when my hands are open, and stop when I close my hands. If they play/ don't play at the wrong time, they're out for the next round. Once they get the hang of starting and stopping, I have them leave their instrument on the floor, stand up, and move over one spot around the circle. Then they pick up the new instrument and repeat. Keep going around the circle and switching instruments! The great thing about this is I can use it to review a variety of concepts. Instrument names and playing techniques are obvious ones, but I can also teach dynamics by having them play louder/ softer when I hold up dynamic symbols or move my hands bigger or smaller, review instrument classification by calling out certain types to play on different turns, or practice rhythms by having them echo patterns instead of starting/ stopping. Lots of ways to change it up! 2. Musication I purposefully save videos from this awesome YouTube channel to use only for this purpose so that I know students won't get tired of them. They are most well-known for the play-along videos for Boomwhackers and hand chimes with color-coded notes, but there are also play-along videos for percussion (which is great for large groups and younger students), and even chord play-alongs (which I use with ukulele but could also be done with guitar, piano, etc). One other pro tip for these: you can slow down or speed up the videos on YouTube without distorting the sound by clicking on settings (the gear icon at the bottom of the video) and selecting "playback speed". This is a perfect way to keep classes engaged and "up the ante" by repeating the same song but speeding up each time! Of course switching the parts/ notes they're playing is another great way to change it up and keep everyone on their toes. 3. posters I don't do this often but every now and then, especially if I'm under the weather and I don't think the students will be too high-energy, I'll have the class make posters to hang up on the walls. Sometimes I'll have them make posters for an upcoming music event to hang up around the building, including reminders about concert etiquette. Other times I have them make posters about something they're learning: instrument families, a musical element, music vocabulary, etc. Bonus: it's great to have student work to actually display on the walls because most of our student work isn't visual, and administrators (and kids!) love to see that in the classroom! 4. soundscapes There are so many ways to do soundscapes- I've written an entire blog post just about all the ways to do them here- but the most basic one I pull out most often in this scenario is to write down names of places on slips of paper, fold them up and have students draw one from a jar, and then have small groups come up with a soundscape to match that scene using only their voices and found objects they have in the room. So for example if a group has the beach, they may make the sounds of waves by flapping a piece of paper, seagulls with their voice, beachballs getting hit by hitting a chair, etc. If you're reading this right now and thinking ha, I wish I had a sequenced curriculum laid out for me that I could even stray from in the first place! Don't worry, you're definitely not alone- I talk to so many music teachers every week who are planning their lessons week by week or even day by day from scratch! You can get my complete curriculum with all the plans and materials for the entire school year for K-6 general music here, or learn exactly how to make your own in this free e-course here. I hope these lesson ideas are helpful the next time you find yourself in one of those situations- I'll be using a few of them this week after I finish my concerts and try to finish the week until our vacation!

January teaching tips for the elementary music education classroom. Kickstart the new year with these fun lessons and management ideas.

Learn how to practice rhythms with this budget-friendly and fun rhythm game in your elementary music classroom.

The Montessori method of education teaches reading and writing by isolating each sound/symbol and allowing the child to manipulate them herself through the movable alphabet. So why would we teach …

6 Stretchy Band Songs and Activity Ideas from Music Teacher, Lena Leon Are you looking for more Stretchy Band songs and activity ideas? Lena Leon is an

For those in the US looking for Thanksgiving activities to share with your classrooms, here are several great ideas […]

Best Strategies for Teaching Tempo. Organized Chaos. Elementary general music lesson ideas and tips for teaching tempo, speed, fast and slow effectively.

Need a book based music lesson? Try The Snowy Day music lesson to teach your kindergarten or 1st grade about rhythm!

Kindergarten music centers can be daunting to try! These centers with a huge success with my students! See how I did it!

Here's the lesson plan template that I use to scaffold my lessons and explain concepts to my administrators.

The first time I taught a group of kindergartens I was pretty excited. This age is so fun! But as the group walked in I realized the HUGE struggle it is to get Kindergarteners to do anything on their first day of school. It's the most adorable little struggle to get them to sit on the rug