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?

Outdoor Instruments

As I talked about in my previous post, all my classes at Fairview went outside last week for music class. We had many different activities outside and the students learned a lot!

The Kindergarten and 1st graders were given a task of finding an object in nature that could be used as an instrument. After finding their make shift instruments the Kindergarten students got to share the instrument and play it for the class. I was impressed with the amount of creativity shown. A couple Kindergarteners used pinecones, leaves, sticks, rocks, or a combination of items.

1st grade students filled out a short worksheet to go along with finding their object. This gave them a chance to continue practicing reading and writing skills, as well as, show me what they are learning.

The first part of the worksheet was telling me what their instrument was and drawing a picture of it. After that we figured out how the instrument could make music. I had several ways and each one students tried. As they tried them they would x out the ways that didn't work and circle the ways that did work. (We went one by one as a class so the ones that had more difficulty reading always knew the task.) My 1st graders loved trying to find out the ways their instrument made music. They enjoyed hitting, shaking, scratching, etc. their instrument to try to make noise. I really enjoyed watching them try all the different ways and was SO happy to see them only using their instruments as instruments and not as weapons. (We did talk about that before hand JUST in case.)

At the bottom of the worksheet 1st graders had to come up with a rhythm using quarter notes and eighth notes. I created four boxes and explained that they had to choose either a quarter note or a pair of eighth notes for each box. They could not put BOTH in any of the boxes. All the kids followed the directions! YAY! Finally, each 1st grader got to play their instrument for the class sharing both their rhythm and instrument. It was so much fun!

Here are some of the finished worksheets:





Interested in seeing the worksheet I created. Find it -->here!<---

To finish the day, I always like to share a songtale or story with my Kindergarten - 2nd grade classes. This is part of the routine of my classes and students have come to expect it and know that story time means the end of music class. To go with the theme of being outside in nature I sang the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves.

The kids chuckled at the silliness of an old lady swallowing a pumpkin. They also liked guessing what the old lady sneezes out after swallowing all the things she does. What a great way to end the lesson!

Make some musical memories today!