Five Favorite Music Pins of November

It's that time again!  Here are five great pins I found this month.  Click the link above to find others that have posted their favorite five as well.

1. Brown Bear, Brown Bear paper plate Sol-Mi notation

  What a fun idea and great way to get kids to be interactive and excited about notating music.  She also gave out awards for students who sang their pattern by themselves. 

2.  Glow Stick Drumming

This is an expensive proposition, but might be a cool addition to the end of a musical production!  Find some thick glow sticks and use them as drum sticks.  I've done a glow stick routine with my kindergarten students, but this takes it to a whole new level!

3.  Recorder Reminders

I have something similar up on my wall already, but I REALLY like how these are phrased.  We can always take what we have and improve it by tweaking it, right?

4.  Show Ta and Ti-Ti with shoes on a beat strip

What a fun idea!  There are lots of other ideas on this pin too, but that's my favorite--kids LOVE taking their shoes off :)  I'll take smelly feet if it means they are learning about music!

5.  Christmas Sing Along Idea

Here's a Christmas sing along idea if you have each grade sing their own song.  Have the oldest grade at your school sing this!  Have them dress up to make it even more fun :)  If you are a regular follower of this blog this may look familiar to you!

Sing

     My daughter LOVES to read books from the library and every once in a while we find a gem that she just can't put down.  Most recently, she has been addicted to this book:

     When I opened it up to read it, I realized it was a song that I heard the Carpenters sing growing up (no, I'm not quite in that generation, but it's what my parents listened to!).  Anyway, Lexi wants to read the book over and over again because she loves that a little bird learns how to sing!  What a great message for our students to hear.  You DON'T need to be the best singer in the world, you just need to find YOUR own voice and USE it!  Without everyone's voice, the world is a less beautiful place. 
      To prove my point, the actual composer of the song is heard in the recording below.  Not the best voice, but what if he had never used it?  I bet we would have never heard this song:

     Let's encourage all of our students to SING! 

PS--Oh, and the book comes with a nice CD recording of the song performed by Becca Kauffman with The Midnight Sun Ensemble :)

A Christmas Sing-Along Idea!

     Each month our school has an assembly to give out our monthly awards to students.  But, December's assembly is different, because each grade level also sings its own Christmas song for the rest of the school.  Nothing crazy fancy, they learn it in their classrooms and stand up and sing it from their spots.
     Several years ago there was this really great group of 6th graders and we wanted to make sure they had a great last Christmas singing experience, so I wrote a song for them.  Feel free to use it at your school!  Please direct others to this page to get the words if they want to use it :)
     For the full effect, have students dress up in Christmas colors, wear some shades, and design their own paper guitars using templates designed by an artistic student of your choice (we had a LOT of talent that year).  Or get blow up guitars from Oriental Trading Compay!  We sang a few of the traditional verses first and then followed it with our new verse in a grandiose style and the crowd went wild! 

       What have you done to let your students know how special they are?

Graphics by:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kindergarten-Kids-At-Play
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Lovin-Lit
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Khrys-Bosland