It’s that time of year when novelty and creativity are the key to happy students and teachers. Everyone is weary of the year and ready for summer. Yet, summer is a VERY long way off. So it’s at this time of year when I pull out every trick I can think of in order to keep my students on task and learning something that will make them a little more musically literate every day.
I’m busy enough that I don’t have time for a long post, but then, all of the teachers I know are too busy to read a long post, so I’m going to let my picture speak for me today.
This time of year, stores like Hobby Lobby stock a TON of summer craft items at really low prices and it’s a great time to stock up on items that you can throw into your manipulative bag of tricks when your lessons need a little spice.
I recently came across, a good price on that foam board stuff, pipe cleaners, puffy balls and Popsicle sticks. Someone somewhere on your campus already has all of these things, and they are just crying out to be used…… When I got these materials out for my kinder and first grade students to work with this week, I knew I had a big hit. They were thrilled to show me what they knew as they practiced being composers. It was so much fun!
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| kinder demonstrating high, medium and low |
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| We added a line, but we found that the little puffs didn’t want to stay on the line…. I decided not to use pipe cleaners in following lessons Here they showed which sound happened first, second and third, the high medium or low sound |
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| We collected several patterns and at this point kinder students chose which pattern to use, then we sang each pattern in turn…..Here you see a high high low, low, high high and then a high low high pattern |
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| in first grade we added Popsicle sticks and used sol and mi to create new music |
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| Next time I’ll use yarn for the lines because it doesn’t hold it’s bent shape I think that the students will have an easier time keeping it straight. |
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| This first grader wanted a rest at the end and improvised one even though I had only passed out four sticks. |
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| I ordinarily just have one size stick, but the small ones make great bars! Having two different sized sticks makes it more interesting. 🙂 |
How fun!! Thanks for sharing!!