Rockin' Resources Linky Party

I have been wanting to blog for quite a while. I actually was nominated for a blogging award that I'm still trying to get around to blogging about. This time of year is just crazy. I spent the last five days off traveling around and visiting family, family, and more family. I promise that once my life settles down I will get back to blogging more often.

Anyways, by now you know all about the Teachers Pay Teachers big Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale. This is my favorite day of the year! This was the first sale I was a part of last year and it is so exciting to be around again this year. My wishlist is already chalk full of fun stuff! I'm going to share three products with you that I think you should add to your wishlist: one is from my store, one is from a fellow music teachers store, and one is from an awesome clip artists store. I'm doing this as part of Music a la Abbott's Linky Part


First, from my store I would suggest adding my MEGA-Bundle Half Notes/Rests and Whole Notes/Rests Songs and Activities:


This bundle is full of all sorts of fun resources for preparing, presenting, and practicing half notes, half rests, whole notes, and whole rests. There are 10 song files with games and activities:

There are interactive and printed games:

And soon there will be worksheets!

You can get all of this for an amazing price during the big site wide sale!

Second, I'm really excited to buy this product from Jena Hudson's shop:

I loved all her other glyphs and since Carnival of the Animals is a set of songs I have to teach I thought this would be a great piece to add. If you haven't used any of Jena's Listening glyphs in the past make sure you check them out.

Finally, I'm always excited to grab some fun clip art during a sale. I'm planning on buying this clip art from Whimsy Clips:

That's all for now! Have fun shopping!

Back in the Swing of Things...Almost

We started back at school January 2nd after the Holiday Break, but it has taken me until now to finally feel back in the swing of things.

Why? Because after Thursday and Friday we had an arctic wind hit Wisconsin where we experienced down to -65 degrees Fahrenheit at times. It was so cold many buses weren't working and one of my school districts cancelled school for THREE days in a row!

The cold weather definitely has made it difficult to get back to business and focus on the task at hand. This is my 4th year of teaching and I have to say that though it doesn't always get easier with each year, I do feel much more focused and have a clearer idea of what I want to accomplish each year.

This week I'm going to share two things I'm doing in my classroom as part of Steph's 2/4 Tuesday Linky Party:

1) Introducing Low Do using Peas Porridge Hot:
Now that we are back from break and done with concerts it is time to add another note to Music Street. For my 2nd graders the new note was low do. To teach about low do I put together an interactive powerpoint where students reviewed notes they knew and learned about low do.



They even got to learn about the Do Key!

Then for extra practice students used the staff dry erase boards to write the notes on themselves. This was great for me because it allowed me to see how each individual student was doing. It also helped me see if it was a large group that needed the extra practice or just one or two.

You can get the file I used for teaching Low Do in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store HERE.

2) Reviewing Half Notes
I've also been spending some time working on counting half notes. To continue practicing this I have been using Lindsay Jervis's Dashing Through the Snow game (click the picture to buy it yourself).

She has a similar rhythm game for Valentine's Day HERE. My students love this game, but for right now I'm having them play it a little bit different than the way it is described. My 2nd graders just learned half notes, so instead of racing one by one I am having students work in a group. I clap the rhythm and as a group they try to find the answer. If their group gets the correct rhythm after I clap it three times I give EVERY group with the right answer a point. Eventually I will make it more difficult by clapping it less times or making students work individually, but this seems to be a simpler way to make the game work and they still really enjoy it.

I hope you find these tools and resources helpful! :)

Just a quick reminder that I am holding a 100 Teachers Pay Teachers Followers Giveaway, as a celebration of reaching 100 followers on my Teachers Pay Teachers account. For more details on how to enter you can click the picture below:

Have You Been to Melody Street?

One of my favorite things to teach about are the instrument families and the various instruments. I teach this unit in three sections:

3rd grade learns about the four instrument families and the instruments from the orchestra that belong to these four families. We focus on the characteristics of each family and talk about how non-orchestra instruments would also fit into the four families.

In 4th grade we add on to their knowledge about the four instrument families and we focus more on the sound of each instrument and their particular instrument family. We talk about the word timbre and we learn how to describe music using various timbre words.

Finally in 5th grade we talk about various ensembles and how different ensembles use different groupings of instruments. They have to use their knowledge of instrument families and instrument timbres to arrange instruments into various ensembles. Some of the ensembles we focus on are concert band, orchestra, jazz band, and

This year, I'm more excited to teach instrument families than I have EVER been before. This is due to some of the amazing resources I have found. There are so many great youtube videos and games I plan on using for this unit. I'll share different ones in the next few days and weeks, but I'll start with one I have been using with my 3rd graders.

Last summer, I stumbled upon this gem. It is a story called Melody Street. Some of you may have already heard of it. It is a story about the instruments of the orchestra and it plays the sounds of the instruments as the story is read to the kids. The story is in three chapters and I find it to be very interesting.

When I first found the story, I was a bit worried about using it. I was excited, but 3rd graders can be so fickle at times. I love teaching 3rd grade, but they tend to be in that stage where some things are now too 'kiddie' for them. I decided to be brave and just try it this year as an introduction into studying the instrument families. To my delight they LOVED the story and many of them stated "That was really good!"

We have been reading the story in chunks. We read the first chapter the first day and then we got through part of the 2nd chapter. The only thing that bothers me about the story if you cannot start in the middle of a chapter. I want the kids to have the full experience of hearing all the instruments playing, but I am not sure how to finish the chapter without starting all over. (The second chapter is about 15-20 minutes!)

Anyways, there is also a Melody Street site with different music games and activities. One I particularly find useful and will probably use with one of my classes is one where the students have to identify the instruments by sound.

Hope you enjoy these resources as much as I do. Do you have any other cool instrument sites to share?

Fun in the Sun - Week 4 & 5

Week 4 Events:

• Bochee Ball
• Lightning (Basketball)
• Relay Race
• Scoops in the Hoop

Week 4 Teams:

• Chad
• Chile
• El Salvador
• Italy

Week 4 we played a mix of games. First, I had two teams play Bochee Ball while the other two teams played a game of Lightning, and then they switched.

I also had them run a relay race with batons and then finally played a game that I just called Scoops in the Hoop. This is a really fun, but challenging game that students really enjoyed. Each student has a scooter they must stay on the entire game. Each team gets a laundry basket as their goal. Many waffle balls are put in the center of the court and each student has a scoop. As soon as the game starts all the students roll to the center and try to get as many balls into their laundry basket as they can. No stealing balls out of the other teams basket and no puppy guarding. Whichever team gets the most balls in their basket, when all the balls are gone, wins the game.

As a fun way to end Summer School, we had water fights 3 of the 4 last days of summer school. The last day it was a little rainy, so we ended up watching a movie instead.

Fun in the Sun - Week 3

The third week of summer school was the week of July 4th. Since July 4th was on a Wednesday this year we had school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. This meant relatively low attendance for the entire week. Plus, having July 4th in the middle of the week meant some took Monday-Wednesday for vacation and some took Wednesday-Friday off.

Due to low numbers I only created two teams this week:

• Peru
• Russia

We started off the week with a game of soccer. I was surprised how many of the kids didn't know how to play soccer. Apparently it is one of the few sports they don't have leagues for here. However, I myself grew up around soccer so I am convinced that it is a great sport! I explained the rules and students played a game of soccer.

To go with the soccer game, they played the second day, they had a relay race where students had to dribble the ball between the cones. Many didn't actually dribble it, but I ended up counting it since none of them seemed to know how.

To add to the low attendance, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were EXTREMELY hot! This meant some students didn't come to school because they did so much outside in the heat they were exhausted and stayed home on Thursday and Friday.

To deal with the heat I decided to come up with some fun water games to play. I ran to the Family Dollar on Wednesday and bought some supplies. I bought some spray bottles, five gallon buckets, sponges, and plastic cups.

July 5th, I only had 3 students show up for class. I had one of my students fill up both of the 5 gallon buckets of water. We brought them outside and played a water relay game. Since there was only 3 students (2 boys and one girl), we decided to have a relay of boys verses girls. We set up the two 5 gallon buckets next to each other and put two other 3.5 gallon buckets about 5 meters away. Each team got a sponge and the first person ran from the 3.5 gallon bucket to the 5 gallon bucket. Once at the 5 gallon bucket, the person dunk the sponge in the bucket full of water and ran back to the 3.5 gallon bucket. Then the team member squeezed the water into the empty bucket and handed the sponge to the next person on the team. Continuing this process for either a certain amount of time or until one team gets to a certain measurement on the bucket.

After the water relay we had a massive water fight where I, of course, got drenched.

The last day of the week we finished off with some 'target' practice of sorts. One of the teachers made a target station using pool noodles. You can learn how to make this game here. My students really loved this and we ended up playing it again the next week.

Thanks for reading!

Fun in the Sun - Week 2

Week 3 Featured Countries

• Brazil
• Egypt
• New Zealand
• Norway

I learned from the first week that I needed to be the one putting together teams. This way I could make sure that teams were even and fair. Each week this proved to be rather difficult. I did not want the same students together over and over again and I wanted students to feel successful. Unfortunately, when a team was losing often everyone on that team gave up! :( This was extremely frustrating to me as a teacher and I did not know how to deal with it. I just kept trying to remind students that you can't give up all the time.

This weeks events were the following:

• Ultimate Frisbee
• Obstacle Course
• Buddy Walkers

I was really excited about Ultimate Frisbee. The first day we were missing lots of students so I ended up playing Ultimate with the kids. I didn't do terribly, but I kind of warned them ahead of time that having me on their team did not mean they were going to win. However, I was proud of the fact that I caught 3 of 4 passes thrown my way. Not too bad for a music teacher with little athletic ability!

Overall, students did rather well with Ultimate Frisbee. In fact the gym teacher told me she was really impressed to see how well all the kids were doing with it. She said she will have to try playing it with some of the older kids next school year.

The obstacle course was also rather interesting. I set up 2 matching courses. It started with 6 hula hoops right next to each other, followed by a scooter, and about 10 meters away I added a cone with a bean bag placed by it. 5 cones were set up about 2 meters apart and then two cones symbolizing the finish line were set-up 10 meters from that.

Instead of forming a long line it was set up in a square, one obstacle on each side of the square. The fun thing about obstacle courses is there are LOTS of different obstacles you can create and many different set-ups, as well. I set it up so each member of the team had to go through the obstacle course as fast as they could. The team with the quickest time won. (I timed them using my i-Pod.) However, I added 2 seconds for every penalty they got (for not following the rules). Since there were four teams and only two obstacle courses the teams not playing at the time would work to re-set the course as people went through. For example, one person would bring the bean bag back to its start point, one person would direct the next member to go when their teammate reached the finish line, etc.

As, I stated earlier you can have fun creating your own course, but if you are wondering how to do my course here is what the obstacles were:

1. Students stepped into the hula hoops bringing them over their head and then placing them on the ground. Then they step into the next hula hoop and continue through all of them.
2. Students must SIT on the scooter and push it to the cone without getting off the scooter. If they fall off they must get back on before continuing to the cone.
3. Students put the bean bag on top of their head and balance it while going AROUND the cones. If the bean bag falls off they must pick it up before proceeding on.
4. Dash to the finish line!

Students complained when first told what the obstacles were, but it was apparent once they got started that they had a lot of fun!

The Buddy Walkers are two pieces of wood with strings attached. Students stay on the wood planks and hold the strings while walking together. They are quite a challenge and some did amazingly well together, while others did not.

Thanks for reading!

Fun in the Sun - Week 1

My second hour class for summer school was VERY different than my first class. My first hour class was obviously in the computer lab, but my second hour class was Fun in the Sun. My first hour class was students going into grades 1-3, but my second hour class was students going into grades 4-6.

The Fun in the Sun class was based on the Olympics. We did not do all the Olympic events, but we did have different countries as team names and different events that the teams would compete in. Each week we had about three events, which did take almost the entire week to get through.

The first week teams were:

• Argentina
• Australia
• China
• Germany

The events for the first week were:

• Team Event - Kickball
• Racing Event - Hurdles
• Other Event - Tug-of-War

The biggest challenge of this week was picking teams. I picked teams completely random the first week. Students picked a country from the hat and that is how they ended up with teams. The problem was that everyone on Team Germany ended up being the powerhouse. They won every single game. On the other hand Team Australia had a lot of problems at the beginning of the week getting a long. All of them were good athletes on their own, but they just were not getting along. This led to students quitting in the middle of the game and the other teams not even having to try to win. However, by the end of the week they seemed to be getting along better and working together a little bit better. They even ended up winning one of the Hurdles Races and a couple Tug-of-War matches.

This first week taught me that it is very important to pick teams as the teacher rather than randomly. It leads to fairer teams and a more successful events.

Each week there were new teams and new events to compete in. This meant students had to learn how to get along throughout the week. Some did a great job right away and some took all week to get along.