Winding Down to the End...

One of the disadvantages of using social networking, this year, is I get to see how many of you are already done with school or are only a day or two away from the end. It's nice to know that some of you are in the same boat as me, or have even longer before you're done with school.

Working in two different districts has it's challenges and one of them is the end of the year. I work in one district that is always done with school before the other. This year, one of my schools is done on June 5 and the other isn't done until June 11. It makes it tricky for teaching. I have to find ways to wind down at both schools, but I have to do it at different times.

One of the things I always do at the end of the school year (thanks to my wonderful cooperating teacher) is Campfire Songs Week. The last full week of school I always have students come into class and make a circle while we sing all sorts of silly and fun songs that you would learn around a campfire or at a camp. These songs soon become favorites of my students and they ask me by December, "When are we going to sing those silly songs?"

This year, I started putting together a powerpoint presentation with all of the song lyrics for the songs we sing. This way it can help me save my voice a little bit, because students can see the lyrics themselves. (They often already know the melodies, since they sing the songs every year, but they don't always know the words.) There are so many great campfire songs, so each year I put together different songs with a mix of student favorites and new camp songs I know they will enjoy.

My first presentation of Campfire Songs is available at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. People seemed to enjoy it so much, I am in the process of creating a Campfire Songs, Vol. 2. Each Campfire Songs Volume comes with 15 songs that have written lyrics, lyrics with chords, standard notation, plus blank slides which allow you to change the lyrics to the version you sing.

Here is a preview of what you will see
(Click the images to buy the file yourself!)




What are some of your traditions for the end of the year? I'd love to know in the comment section!

Get Ready to ROMP!

Shake, Shake Shudder
near the sludgy old swamp.
The dinosaurs are coming.
Get ready to romp!

The outdoor lesson for 2nd grade was using the story Dinosaurumpus!


As I have mentioned before, I like to use literature in my music classes. It reminds students of the connection between music and literature, but also there are so many great music stories I want to share with my students!

What I noticed about Dinosaurumpus! was that it had a lot of rhyming, but also had a nice steady beat. Along with this, it has tons of onomatopoeia words. This allowed for some fun sound effects. I broke the story into 6 parts and then gave each group of 3 students a part. They had to create sound effects for all the words I underlined. I told them that since Dinosaurs would roam around outside they had to create all their sound effects using their mouths, bodies, or items found in nature.



After a day of work they preformed their parts for the class.



Some groups were really creative with how they came up with sound effects :). Other groups, sounded as though they did the same sound effect for everything :/.



To stretch students creativity, in the future, I would change some of the directions for the project. First, I would make sure to state that they should use at least two sound effects with their voice, two sound effects with their body, and two sound effects using nature. I would also stress that the sound effects have to be different. Not just hit the stick on the ground, then hit it on a tree, then hit it on something else. Instead scraping the stick, breaking the stick, hitting the stick, etc.

Overall, I was very happy with this project, though. I love watching my students be creative and get the opportunity to explore music outside of the music classroom.