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 - Concert Costumes & Color by Solfege

I have begun to love Tuesdays, just because of the 2/4 Tuesday linky party hosted by Steph!

As promised, last week, I am going to talk about how I let parents know about costuming for my concerts. After picking students for speaking parts and thinking about what I am capable of supplying for concerts and what I am not, I can let parents know what their child should wear for the upcoming concert. The sooner I can let parents know, the more prepared they can be. I hate burdening parents with costuming, but sometimes it is just not possible for me to supply all elements of the costumes.

In order to make it simpler for me and for parents, I send home slips with students about when the concert is, what part they are playing, and what they should wear for the concert. Here is my template that you can alter for your own use:


(Click the picture above to be brought to the dropbox file)
For more concert tips check out my other 2/4 Tuesday Posts - Preparing Students for Try-outs, Try-Outs, & Picking Speaking Parts

My latest work has been on creating Color by Solfege worksheets. I needed a fun way to get my students to continue practicing their solfege even during the Holiday Concert season. My little ones (2nd Grade-5th Grade) have really been enjoying this and are very excited to color the sheets next week.


If you like the Color by Solfege worksheet you should make sure to like my Facebook page HERE. I will be participating in a Facebook Frenzy through Teachers Pay Teachers the beginning of December and I will be giving away at least one Color by Solfege Christmas/winter worksheet.