Music Centers

During the week of Thanksgiving Break, I didn't want to start a lesson or unit when I wouldn't see all the classes of the week. So, we experimented with music centers. I have 50 minute classes, so I chose 4 centers. It took about 10 minutes to explain the games and then students travelled in groups and had about 10 minutes at each center. They seemed to enjoy them, so I will definitely try this

3 Staff Games

We just finished some games to help reinforce note reading. This was a 50 minute class. The first activity was completed with the entire class together and lasted about 15-20 minutes. My student teacher and I divided the class into 2 groups. My student teacher was the leader of activity 2 and I was the leader of activity 3. They spent about 15 minutes at each activity.


Activity 1: Review the

The Remarkable Farkle McBride

I teach this book every year to my second graders, but I have also used it as an emergency lesson for a substitute teacher for any grade level. If you are not familiar with the book, you can browse a few of the pages on Amazon.

My musical goal for this book is to introduce or review the instrument families. This book is very well written. The words naturally fall into a rhythmic beat with a

110 Free Music Education Apps

I've had the iPad for about 3 months and have downloaded many free music apps. I have organized them into the following folders so that all the music apps can be found on one screen. The folders are shown in the screenshot below:





 

Listening

1) Classical Lite
2) SPCO (Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra)
3) NPR Music
4) Pandora
5) Classical Music For Babies
6) iLuvMozart
7) Classical 1
8)

Leap Back Home to Me

I love using children's literature in the classroom. Last spring, when browsing the book fair, this book immediately caught my attention. The title, "Leap Back Home to Me," made me think of how we call the pitch "do" home base. A few weeks ago, this book was used in a second grade lesson to introduce melodic improvisation, phrasing, and ending a phrase on "do."



Even though I had been

Interactive Music Flipcharts

In May, I blogged about Technology In the Music Classroom. I talked about many wonderful tools we acquired during a construction renovation, including the interactive white boards. We have Promethean ActivBoards which run on ActivInspire Software. In this post, I will share some flipcharts that I have submitted to Promethean Planet and are available for free download. There are brief