The Concert Countdown Begins...

For today's post I'm going to link it up with Amy Martin's...

I'm going to share my Holiday traditions for all of you. Unfortunately, they are probably not quite as exciting at Amy's tradition. My Holiday tradition is to have LOTS of concerts. This year I have a total of 4 concerts (and only one is a repeat.) How does this happen? Well, that is the joy of working at two different districts and the holiday concerts being a must have at both.

Wednesay, was concert 1 of 4, so after that I count down for Christmas break with concerts. I know that sounds silly, but it is a chaotic time of year. I love concerts, but having so many close together sometimes makes my head spin. In the end, though, I always look back on it with good memories. :)

Wednesday's concert was A Holiday Moosical performed by my K-3 students at Fairview Elementary. It is always so much fun putting together costumes and seeing what the students look like. The dress-rehearsal in the morning is interesting, but nothing compares to seeing it all in its glory! The costumes just really add another element. This is only my second year adding costumes, but I don't think I'll ever go back to not having them. They are just so cute and fun.

The challenge of coming up with these costumes is finding people to help and coming up with ideas on how to create these costumes without sewing abilities. I got a helpful tip from Emily Quezda last year by reading this POST. She talked about using hooded sweatshirts for creating no sew costumes and this really inspired many of my costumes this year.

Here are a few of the costumes I came up with for this performance:
Christmas Trees:


This picture was taken the day before the performance, since I can never find time to take pictures the day of. So, that is why he is wearing jeans. The day of my trees wore brown pants and brown shoes to make it look like the roots and bark of the tree.

Snowmen:



Candy Canes:

This is just colored duck tape covering cardboard. Very simple, but really nice effect.

Marta the Moose:
The moose costume took me quite a while, but it is my favorite costume I've made so far. I took a big foam piece and cut it to look like an antler, then I cut the piece into half so the antlers were symmetrical.

I used hot glue to cover the foam with white felt and then hot glued the antlers to the sweatshirt. Of course they were too heavy so they started drooping, so my solution was to hot glue a wire clothes hanger to the back. This helped stabilize the antlers and make them stay up. I finished by adding some fun garland around the antlers to dress her up for the holidays. This costume really stole the show! :)


Hope you enjoyed the pictures. How do you create costumes for your concerts? Do you have any creative ways of working around your budget? Do you have parents help make costumes for your productions or do you do it all yourself?

2/4 Tuesday - MSOTM, Rockin' Behavior Update, & More Concert Prep

Yay! Time for another 2/4 Tuesday!

1) Music Student of the Month
With October over it is time for me to update my Music Student of the Month bulletin board at Fairview Elementary.



As you can see from the picture, I have a poster for each month of the school year and two spaces. Since I teach at a small school (one of each class Kindergarten-5th Grade) I pick one Kindergarten-2nd grader to get featured and one 3rd Grade-5th Grade student. At the end of the month I post their name under the month and at the end of the year they get a special Music Student of the Month certificate for the month they were featured. It is a fun way to recognize individual students that are going above and beyond expectations on a regular basis.



If you do something similar and are looking for fun awards for each month of the year, I will be putting together a bundle of my Student of the Month decorations and awards later this month. You can watch for an update in my Teachers Pay Teachers store or back here on my blog.

2) Rockin' Behavior Update
As you can see in my prior post, here... I have been using a Rockin' Behavior clip chart to motivate my students to work hard in music class. It has been working really well so far and I have already had my reward 'parties' for about three classes. Now that it is getting farther into the year some of my classes have earned five stickers on their clips already! This means they have made 5 'tours' to the top of the behavior chart! For showing such excellent work in music I have created a bulletin board (it is actually the back of a door window) that displays these classes filled clips. After their clips get added to the board their class gets a new clip and they start the process all over again.



3) Concert Try-outs 'Rubrics'
I discussed in my last 2/4 Tuesday post that this week is try-outs for Holiday Concert speaking parts. This is always a difficult part of having Holiday plays (as I'm sure most of you know). Now that I'm doing try-outs for my fourth year now, I feel like I finally have a process and guidelines that work for me. This is how my try-outs are set up:

1. About a week beforehand I prep students for the process and send home slips about the try-out process. (To read more about that go here)
2. During music class I have students in small groups go up and perform the part they practiced on their own.
3. I score students on the following three things: voice volume/tone quality - do they speak loud enough and clear enough, do they speak slow enough, etc, theatrical ability - do they show emphasis in the way they speak and are they willing or able to take cues from me, and reading fluency - this is also where I pay attention to if they practiced. Obviously you can't guarantee this but it is normally clear by the way the student reads and delivers their lines if they took time to look at them or not. This is NOT about how good of a reader the student is, just that they deliver the line as though they are good readers.
4. I rate students by giving them a 1, 2, 3, or 4 in each category.
5. If students have to sing a solo for the part they are auditioning for I have all students auditioning sing all at once. I can normally switch them around so I can hear each individual voice. They again get rated in two categories: tone - sing with a clear tone and good quality, notes - just meaning they follow the notes pretty well and are singing in tune.
6. After all my students are 'rated' it is time to plug in the numbers and pick my parts.

I will discuss how I go about picking parts in my next 2/4 Tuesday post. However, to help you all out I am linking to the rubric I use for my try-outs HERE. Feel free to tweak it to your own delight! Please let me know how you audition for parts or choose parts. I am always looking for new ways to do things.

2/4 Tuesday - Halloween Rap and Concert Prep

It is Tuesday again, which means 2/4 Tuesday! This has been a rough day for me, so this is probably the best part of my day.

1) Halloween Rap Using Ta, Ti-ti, and Ti-ri-ti-ri:

My 3rd graders used their new knowledge of ti-ri-ti-ri to create their own Halloween Raps. This is very similar to the freebie I offered here, but this one adds in ti-ri-ti-ri (you can get just this worksheet for free --->here. Please rate it if you get a chance!). My students got one half hour period to work, plus 15 minutes a second day. At the end of the day my students got to share their compositions for the class and they had a great time!

2) Holiday Concert Try-Outs:
It is hard to believe, but I started Holiday Concert prep on Monday. It may seem far off, but when you only see some of your classes once a week you have to start early. I started this week by introducing the music and talking about my try-out process. Try-outs will be held next week and students that want a speaking part must prepare for try-outs by taking home the one page script I sent them home with. Then, next week, I pick students to read their part aloud for the class. I'll discuss more about my try-outs next week, but for now I'm sharing the short letter I send home to parents about my try-out process. I try to make it clear what I look for from each student during try-outs. You can download the file by clicking the link below:

Holiday Concert Try-Out Letter
3) Holiday Concert Smartboard Files for Kindergarten and 1st Grade:



3 years ago, I started to make Smartboard Files with pictures for my little ones. This helped my students who could not read, by being able to connect the words through pictures. The Kindergarten teachers and 1st grade teachers at one of my schools really enjoy these and ask for them each year. One teacher in particular said that it really makes it easier for her, and the kids thought it was awesome that she had the same file I do. You can see a few picture above of what this sort of looks like. (Clip art used in this file is from My Cute Graphics.)

One final note:
My Halloween Freebie was such a hit that I decided to put together a bundle for Thanksgiving. If you liked the Halloween bundle you will definitely like this one! This bundle will be free for the next week (until 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 5) after that it will be $3.00 so make sure to take advantage of this offer now! You can get the bundle here.

Have a terrific Tuesday!