DIY Song Cubes to help children learn music "old favorites" and practice finding and keeping the beat; for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten.
I love using body percussion in my music classroom. It's an effective way to TEACH Beat too. So, here are my easy body percussion activities.
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.
Hi, Jane here from SillyOMusic! Today I want to share a song that I (and pretty much every other Korean person) sang as a child, Santoki. When I was in Preschool,
Get your Star Wars on with sheet music, printables and John Williams inspired activities with this midi-chlorian rich download.
Most of us teach multiple grade levels. I teach 4 year olds through 94 year olds. I skip 12 year olds through somewhere in the 60's, though...
Do you use music in your classroom? I absolutely LOVE using music! I think it can help keep students focused and relaxed while working, I also think it’s great for classroom management, and I think it’s a wonderful motivator for students! Let’s face it… MUSIC can be quite MAGICAL in the classroom. However, for today’s post I am going to focus on how I use music to teach my students all about MOOD. {If you’d like a free copy of these resources simply click here.}You see mood is one of those abstract concepts that can be quite tricky to understand. That’s why I decided to use music in the first place. You see my students were having a hard time identifying mood in texts. So I decided to begin with music, something we are all familiar with. I also think that for kids it might be easier to “feel” mood in music. Especially since many of us choose music to listen to depending on how we are feeling at the moment. I began by introducing the term MOOD with the poster on the left. We then had a discussion on the types of music we like to listen to and […]
Free bell printables, plus Montessori-inspired bell activities, both musical and Christmas bells, for preschoolers through 1st graders.
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
Fourth grade class wrote some terrific "sound songs". I got this idea from another music teacher. Thank you! It was a hit.
Choosing songs to teach from in the music room can be tricky business. For one thing, there are an infinite number of songs from which to choose. You can easily put your head down to think of one song to use in a lesson only to look up hours later with stacks of books and binders next to
I’ve been told that this is the teacher’s mantra when it comes to resources. Thanks to Pinterest, it is even easier to find other people’s fantastic ideas and adapt them for your…
I'm starting to ease into Halloween themed lessons now, and I had a lot of success with this Rhythm Monsters activity today. My first graders have been preparing half notes for a few weeks and this was the first time they saw it and had practice writing it down. For the rhythm monsters lesson, I created this page with 20 different rhythm examples. I'll be honest: the rhythm content really had NOTHING to do with monsters. All I did was put a picture of a monster above each rhythm example and the students were hooked right away. I had each student select four cards and practice clapping/reading their pattern, and then copy it onto their worksheet. I like this activity because the students are being eased into the concept of composition. They are still making aesthetic decisions regarding what order to put their monsters, but without all the stress that comes with having to create rhythms from scratch. Click here to download the entire lesson (includes SmartNotebook file, worksheet, and monster cards) for free!
Contraption 1: The Boomwhacker String- he most wow-worthy Boomwhacker lesson plan and contraption I've ever come up with. Your kids will be playing Boomwhackers like never before!
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
"Magic Feet Follow The Beat" is a fun & engaging game to introduce kids to basic music theory. March to the beat of a drum & learn some note values!
Don’t miss out on one of our favorite toys for targeting all kinds of developmental skills...while making music!
Printable Handbell songs with large, bright colored notes to match the colors of your hand bells. 6 easy songs for kids and beginners.
Song Index
Classical music to teach emotions, to be used alongside for imaginative movement, background to imaginative play or simply to listen to.
DIY Composition Manipulatives. Organized Chaos. easy rhythm cards made from foam sheets. great way to get students composing because each card matches the length of the note or rest and each note is a different color.
Ah, Fall... the leaves are changing colors, the air is getting cooler, the coffees are infused with pumpkin spice... It's a nice time of year. I'm linking up with my blog tribe to share some of my favorite fall lessons! I am lucky enough to teach in a school that is very pro-Halloween. We have a huge costume parade and every class throws a party. It's easily one of my favorite days of the school year. So I have lots of fun doing Halloween songs along with other seasonal songs this time of year. I'll share some great things I've found to do with each grade level... Pre-K Our Pre-K students just learned the letter "M" in their classroom, so I decided to reinforce that literacy component with a fun movement activity called, "Monsters Stomp Around the House." This is a piggyback song to the tune of, "The Ants Go Marching" which we are going to be learning later in the year. Now that they've heard the melody in this song, it should be more familiar to them when we get to it! Kindergarten I learned this song in college and love doing it with my primaries: To trace the melodic contour, I use foam leaves that I bought at a craft store a few years ago. You could also use scarves or paper cutouts for the same effect. 1st Grade Another favorite song that I learned in college is a piggyback song to the tune of "The Muffin Man." This one is called "The Pumpkin Child." Oh, do you know the pumpkin child? The pumpkin child, the pumpkin child! Do you know the pumpkin child Who goes to [ school name]? I start the lesson by telling my students a story of a day when a little pumpkin came to the school and he went to different teachers in the building and asked them if they knew the pumpkin child. Each time I mention a new teacher, we sing the song again. By the time I've finished the story, they've had at least six or seven repetitions of the song and can sing it independently. Then we play a beat passing game and pass a pumpkin around the circle. Whoever the pumpkin lands on is the pumpkin child! I let the pumpkin child pick a movement (pat, clap, snap, etc.) for us to use to keep the steady beat. 2nd Grade I LOVE the book "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything" But do you know what I love even more than the book? This great video that has the story set to a song! I had my students sing along and then act out each part. After singing the song, I bring out the book and we add instruments for each part as well. 3rd-5th Grade For my intermediate students, I've found a couple of fun activities on Pinterest that I use... The kids love reading the notation for Ghost of John in this shape! And we sing it in a two or three part round. I'm excited to try this cup passing game next week. I also do a contest with The Addams Family Song... since music class is a place where we practice performing and stage presence, I challenge them to sing the song like Wednesday Addams: with a frown the whole time and NO SMILING. There is nothing funnier than watching a bunch of kids try their hardest NOT to smile!!! I hope you enjoy these Falloween (as my second graders called it) activities. Don't forget to check out some of the other blogs in the linkup! An InLinkz Link-up
music lessons for home schoolers, music lessons for the young child, peter and the wolf, rhythm, teaching musical form, melody, elementary music
I learned this song from my KTIP mentor, Alicia Franklin, during my first year teaching. I introduce this song in kindergarten and we sing it everyday when we line up. I sing the first note as a fermata and hold it until every student is joining in and doing their job to line up. There are hand motions to accompany the song. On the first word "my", we raise our hands in the air (this makes it easy to see who is actually paying attention in line and ready to sing the song). Then, we do what the song says. Phrase 1: place hands back Phrase 2: exaggerate good posture Phrase 3: take 2 fingers, point at eyes then straight ahead Phrase 4: hands return behind back Phrase 5: zip lips, pretend to put in pocket, hands return behind back, mouth is closed When the kids get to 1st grade, the song only makes guest appearances when we need help remembering how to line up or when I want to see if they can apply the musical concept we just learned. Using the Song For Assessment Assess Tempo If we learned about tempo that day, we may choose a tempo (largo, moderato, allegro) and sing our song accordingly. They may also get to line up to a tempo. I may ask them to show me allegro feet, largo feet, or moderato feet to line up. Depending on how much time is left in class, I may do this individually or in small groups. If I do it individually, I usually take notes in my grade book for a performance assessment. Older students can watch the conductor and respond to accelerandos and ritardandos. Assess Dynamics If we learned about dynamics that day, we may choose a dynamic level for the entire song (piano, mezzopiano, mezzoforte, forte) or watch the conductor to see how the dynamic levels change throughout the song. Older students can usually remember a pattern to assign different dynamic levels to each phrase. Similar to the game discussed above, sometimes we can line up with piano feet (tiptoeing) or forte feet (stomping). Again, depending on the time remaining in class, this is either done individually or in small groups and is sometimes used as a performance assessment. Assess Melody If we learned about melodic direction that day, we may use our hand levels to show the melodic contour. (That's why I like the simple shape of this melody going upward then downward.) If we discussed pitch, we may sing it in a high key or a low key. Assess Harmony If we learned about minor harmony (Halloween), we may choose to change the song to minor and make it sound spooky. (All the kids LOVE this!) Assess Timbre If we discussed different types of voices (speaking, whisper, calling, singing), we may choose to use different voices to use throughout the entire song, or we may change our voices for each phrase. I also have voice cards that I can hold up and show the students what to change to. (View the next post for printable voice cards.) Assess Rhythm If we discussed rhythm (long and short sounds), we may sing the song exaggerating note lengths in tenuto or staccato style. If we discussed a fermata, we may choose one or two words to have a fermata and sing those words really long. Coda These are just a few examples of how I use our line up song for assessment. Sometimes, instead of telling them how to sing it, I let the kids pick a variation to sing. Again, I only sing it every time with kindergarten; and they never get tired of singing it. It only appears occasionally with older grades. It appears sometimes as a warning to those not ready for the hall: "Do we HAVE to revisit kindergarten and sing the line-up song?" Their behavior is quickly corrected. Many older students LOVE the line up song, as it brings nostalgia from kindergarten. Even if you have a line-up song already in place, you could probably use these assessment strategies with your song as well. I would love to hear other ideas to use line-up songs as assessment tools. If you have some more ideas, please comment below.
Science Experiment for Kids: Musical Water Glasses
***Updated: 8/26/16 - Make sure you get the most recent updates! This freebie is a great way to review instrument families or a fun way to take 'notes' in class when learning about instrument families. You can edit any of these and make as many copies of them as you like. I just ask that you refer friends to my store if you like what you see. I would also appreciate any feedback on these worksheets. This file comes with all of the following: PDF - Brass Instrument Crossword PDF - Brass Instrument Crossword Key PDF - Strings Instrument Crosswork PDF - Strings Instrument Crossword Key PDF - Woodwind Instrument Crossword PDF - Woodwind Instrument Crossword Key PDF - Percussion Instrument Worksheet (pitch vs. non-pitch) PDF - Percussion Instrument Worksheet Key To see how I use the Percussion Instrument Worksheet in my own room. Please see THIS blog post! Follow me on Facebook for Fan Freebies and Specials Get more music teaching ideas by reading my blog - Making Music Memories created by Making Music Memories, Brittany De Laruelle, Brittany Ward
A fun and simple musical theory and rhythm game to teach the difference between finding the beat and the rhythm of a song to kids.
Song Index
This article explores the most common rhythm syllable systems used in elementary music classrooms today and works through pros and cons for each method.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE FREE RESOURCE LIBRARY Click here MUSIC EDUCATION RESOURCES IN THE SHOP SHOP Music Resources Add to cart $5.25Rated 0 out of 5 Vocal Explorations : Fall Themed, Animated, Worksheets K-3″ Add to cart $4.50Rated 0 out of 5 Upper Elementary Music Class Chant,Game and Rhythm Lesson: “Get to Know Ya” L2 Stock […]
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Your kids may want to play instruments one day. If you need practice in basic music theory for your kids, these free music note flashcards.
This year I created a small project for us to work on to continue work on high vs. low. I really enjoyed this project because the students...
Learn about how sound is made! Make science fun for kids of all ages by teaching them how sound is made. This sound activity is great for all curriculum
This Animal Actions Rhythm Game is the perfect way to get things moving and practice listening and note recognition skills at the same time.
Looking for fun ideas to practice rhythm in the music room? Are you tired of the same ol', same ol'? Below are four ideas from four of our bloggers! From Linda: I don’t know about you but I love creating form using word chains! I especially love using manipulatives that the students can rearrange to create their own composition. So go ahead and grab that stack of beanie babies you use for tone matching and steady beat activities and Let’s Make Music! Set out 4 beanie babies in a row and have the students echo you. Each beanie baby will receive 2 beats. Rearrange the 4 and have the students echo you again. Continue the process substituting different beanies and changing the order. Eventually, start speaking the A section “Let’s Make Music” while you are arranging four beanie babies. Once you are finished speaking the A section the class should be ready to speak and clap the new beanie baby arrangement. Continue the process – rearranging the beanie babies during the A section. Repeat the lesson on a different day but add non-pitched percussion instruments in place of clapping the beanie baby arrangement. It would be fun to have the students sit in a circle during this lesson and to pass the instrument to the person on their right while speaking the A section. When they are finished speaking the A section they will have a new instrument to play for the B section! Have them continue to speak the beanie baby arrangement first and then play the rhythm of the words on their new instrument. Continue the process. Extend the lesson one more day by dividing your class into groups of 3 or 4. Each group should create their own beanie baby composition to speak and play. It will be an eight beat composition with each beanie baby receiving 2 beats. Perform ABABA. Everyone speaks A and a different group performs their composition for one of the B sections. If you would like a copy of the lesson plan and music for your files click here! http://bit.ly/LetsMakeMusic Enjoy making music and I’d love to hear how you used the lesson with your students! From Elaine: When it comes to working on rhythm-reading in music class, I believe in repetition. Yes, friends, you heard it here first: repetition is key. And there’s nothing wrong with doing the same thing over and over as long as it works. For a long time, I struggled with making rhythm activities more fun. Let’s face it, reading rhythm patterns can be a little boring. So when I’m working with the kiddos reading rhythmic patterns, I like to add a simple backing track. I like to call this “Rhythm Jams”. Here’s how it goes: because this is a sight-reading game, I display several rhythms on my board and randomly choose one at a time. I usually point to the pattern using my fancy finger-pointer. While the beat track is playing, I count the group off for each of the rhythm patterns. Sometimes, I go back to one we’ve already performed just to see if students are more accurate the second time. After we finish the displayed rhythms, I switch the track and the rhythms. This way the kids can try different rhythms in different tempos. Switching things up frequently adds to the excitement and the amount of time you’re able to continue the repetitive activity. By the end of your Rhythm Jams session, your students will be up out of their seat shaking what their Momma’s gave ‘em. Trust me. Can’t find a rhythm track to use? Try THIS website. It’s a huge compilation of YouTube videos featuring a wide variety of groovy rhythm tracks. From David: One of my favorite things to do when working with rhythm is to teach kids to look for rhythm in everyday words and phrases. You can start introducing this concept on the very first day of class while you’re learning kids' names by saying their name and then clapping the rhythm. Da-vid becomes ta ta. Mel-a-nie becomes ti-ti ta. Kim is ta rest. Mag-da-le-na is ti-ti ti-ti and so on. As soon as you get kids to start thinking that all words have rhythm you have the ability to make anything a game and make any word part of a song. I’m trained in Orff Schulwerk and in my levels classes we learned about the work of one of Orff’s most influential students, Gunild Keetman. Keetman was originally Orff’s student but quickly became his contemporary as she and Orff worked together to create what we now know as Orff Schulwerk. Keetman had a huge role in the theory behind everything that we learn and do from rhythm to movement, recorder, and more. One of the things that that I love the most from Keetman is her focus on “Rhythmic Building Bricks.” She says that the building bricks are the smallest rhythmic units that we use when we build our songs and rhymes. There are five building bricks that Keetman referred to over and over again for 2/4 and 4/4 time. Once kids learn to break down phrases with these building bricks they can decode and figure out the rhythms for anything. I usually start with words that kids already know and ask them to think about how many sounds/syllables a word has. I’ll give them a word like “backpack” (two sounds) and ask them to figure out the building brick that goes with it (ta ta). Then we might try out school (one sound) and figure out that it works with the brick ta rest. The most difficult part of all of this is when kids have to decide whether a three sound word is ta ti-ti or ti-ti ta. I try and give them simple words to figure out like “puppy dog” where the sounds are easily separated. There are a million ways you can teach and reinforce this idea that a word has rhythm. I have several sorting games for rhythm centers and interactive SMART board activities that I use to help kids start to categorize words by their rhythm. Eventually I give students other words or a word bank full of words to categorize and sort out. From there you can do a number of things. Teach kids a nursery rhyme or song and then have them work in small groups or pairs to break it down into its rhythmic building bricks. Here’s an example using the nursery rhyme “Rain, Rain, Go Away.” Try an example with the whole class to explain the process and then break them into small groups and give each one a different nursery rhyme to work on. Once the students have figured out their rhythm have them speak the poem and then speak the rhythm. Then have them clap the rhythm or play the rhythm on rhythm sticks. After 3 or 4 minutes, have the groups switch so that students can do the same activity with a different poem. Looking for good nursery rhymes to use in class? I have a free list of them on my blog. Check out the link here: http://www.makemomentsmatter.org/rhymes.html This last fall I took this idea of rhythm building bricks and turned it into a center game. I had little cards with different words and their corresponding rhythms. Students sorted out all the words (about 30 of them total) into five different piles – one for each of the building brick rhythms. Then they arranged them into patterns and wrote down the patterns they created. Every kid walked away from class with a rhythm that they composed using the different rhythmic words. This meant that they gained experience arranging rhythms into different measures and phrases (a composition activity) and they reinforced the idea that each word has its own specific rhythm. Here’s a picture of my kiddos in action. From Tracy: I have found that rhythm skills can be tricky to differentiate in my classroom. Usually we work on rhythms as a whole group or in sections. I plan centers that allow me to work with small groups but struggled for many years to find a way to challenge my gifted students and provide rhythmic remediation for others. Here are a couple of my favorite websites and apps for differentiating rhythm skill work. Music Tech Teacher has several activities and quizzes that address rhythm skills. I use Rhythm Billionaire with 5th graders and Listening to Rhythms with 3rd graders. I think you’ll find several activities there that your students will enjoy. http://musictechteacher.com/music_quizzes/music_quizzes.htm Rhythm Trainer is great for targeting specific notes and note combinations. It can work well with 1st grade through high school. Choose the notes you want to use and then start. Students hear a rhythm and then click the notes given to recreate the rhythm. http://www.therhythmtrainer.com/ Rhythm Cat is an app that works best on an iPad. It starts with very simple rhythms. You tap the iPad to play the rhythm and it gauges if you have played it correctly. Complete the rhythm with only a slight mistake or two and you progress to the next level. Each level comes with an explanation of the duration of the new notes and most levels have a rhythm track and guiding melody. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rhythm-cat-learn-to-read-music/id488167475?mt=8 Rhythm Repeat is another app that I really enjoy. I use it to challenge my gifted musicians. It is a little like the electronic Simon games in the way you play. You will hear a melody and have to tap it back in rhythm using 3 different colored dots. The difficulty increases quickly and will prove to be an exciting challenge to your students who need it. Difficulty can be set and uses more dots (pitches), increased tempo and more complex patterns. FUN! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rhythm-repeat/id455680974?mt=8 Hope you and your students enjoy these rhythm activities! Sing, Teach, Love!
It is now time to add rests to our music. This is basically the same lesson as lesson 8 but it includes the quarter rests. The addition of the rest means there are a lot more options for grouping the notes in sets of 4. Just a reminder that the rest gets one beat just as the quarter note does. Whenever the children are reading and clapping music it is important that the rest be "felt" even though there is no sound. For this lesson you may want to add instruments for variety. I always told my kids that preparing for the instruments would make us successful musicians so we read and clapped the music first to be sure we were ready to transfer it to instruments. Once again you can cut the strips out without the words and let the children find the matching pairs. Then print and cut out individual notes and rests and let the children find new ways to group them into sets of 4. Use these to create a musical piece to play. I created 26 different groupings. Any of the groupings you create are in sets of 4 which means they are in 4/4 time signature - 4 beats to a measure. The children can play these patterns along with any number of songs that are in 4/4 time. Here are some suggestions: Yankee Doodle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CObFQznhls Rainbow Color song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt2DCGYzSsc Wheels on the Bus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nKBKPcycFE Row, Row, Row Your Boat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYLKEePMvIU Be Doodle Dee Dum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9OaTJyg_Y Dance Myself to Sleep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQmut5GI7-k&list=AL94UKMTqg-9DC1_3UPjnhZVQhZ2NCqrzH Honker Duckee Dinger Jamboree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdv5uuYrTKQ&list=AL94UKMTqg-9DC1_3UPjnhZVQhZ2NCqrzH
So we’ve decided what we want to teach . We’ve chosen our musical materials . Now it’s time to plug it all in. Today I’m sharing how I’ve planned the first month of Kindergarten.
