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I love using my Smartboard to quickly assess my students' rhythm/melody dictation skills. Keeping with our "Under the Sea" theme in grade 1, I created a simple Smartboard activity where students notate so-mi on my 4 line staff (right before we get to 5 lines) after hearing me sing a short so-mi melody. Click HERE for the free Smartboard file!     My grade 4 students were working on identifying "syn-co-pa" (this year I actually started saying "ti-ta-ti" instead) in November. We learned "Canoe Song" to help us achieve our goal. I created a Smartboard activity helping students demonstrate the rhythm of the words in "Canoe Song". Click HERE for this one! And last of all today... a super fun one that is just great for practicing ta and ti-ti in a fun way! Kooshball Rhythms! Click HERE  for the Smartboard file. Check out The Music Interactive for more free resources.   - Steph PS- I'm so sorry my files weren't available! Everyt...

Hello y'all! I created this Music Symbol Memory Game to add to my grade 4-6 centres.  Click  HERE  to get the free PDF file!  I am going to print it off, cut the cards out, glue front to back and get 'em laminated!  Ta da! - Steph

I am currently working on orchestral instrument families with my grade 2 students. I have been trying out some different tech resources to help us learn about this. Check out my post Orchestra Activities for the Smartboard   to find on-line resources that I have tried out earlier this month. Thanks to Brittany over at Making Music Memories  who commented about how wonderful Melody Street is! Thanks for introducing me to Melody Street Brittany! It was actually one of those many things that I had pinned and then forgot to look at. Oops! Melody Street is FANTASTIC! It is great interactive story for iPads but also works on your Smartboard or just anything that will project a video from your computer. We started by using Melody Street on our Smartboard. We listened to the story of "The House on Melody Street", starting with chapter one. Watch it on Youtube:  The House on Melody Street After watching each chapter and learning more about the instruments, we played the instr...

I am doing an Under the Sea theme right now with my K-3 students and they are loving it! We are having so much fun with it. Here is a photo of my bulletin board this month! This past week in grade 2 we read poems from Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae. We focused on the Jellyfish poem and did a few things with it. First I read the Jellyfish poem, then we all read it together.  Next we brainstormed words to describe how a jellyfish would move. We then chose instrument sounds that would match those words. Finally, we practiced moving like jellyfish: slow, smooth, floating, curvy, jiggly. Some children created an underwater soundscape to portray the movement, while the rest moved like jellyfish. The following class we reviewed how a jellyfish would move and then painted that movement! I found this great idea for jellyfish from Kristin over at  For the Love of Art . Check out her blog for the instructions! This was such a fun way to connect poetry, music and visual art! What...

The grade 1 to 3 students performed "Twinkle and Shine" by John Jacobson and John Higgins for our Holiday Concert in December. I was excited to use some kind of extra light during the concert, especially for the ballad "The Light at the Top".  I found these cool finger lights at Dollarama! They were only a dollar for a pack of four!  Each student had a light on their finger for the song. The kids loved doing the choreography with light on the end of their fingers! We loved it! The kids received so many compliments from the community too! This piece was by far the favourite of the evening! - Steph

Here are some great interactive sites for students to learn about the orchestra! I used Orchestra Fact Files to introduce my younger students to what an orchestra is! Kids Mozart Orchestra Fact Files What technology do you use when teaching your students about the orchestra? - Steph

Here's my first official Make it Monday! January is Under the Sea Month in Music! Grade 3 students will be working on all of their solfege signs this week, so to tie into our theme I made a solfege fishing game! First, I found free fish clipart... that I love! This awesome clipart is  here on Clker.com. After downloading the picture, I copied it onto 7 different slides in Powerpoint. On each fish I typed a solfege syllable. After I printed my fish off, I cut them out, glued them onto cardstock, and added a paper clip . To make the fishing rod I simply used an old marker, twine, a magnet, and hot glue.  I put my fish in a bucket and voila! My fishing game is ready to go! To play the game, I will either play a recording of "Do-Re-Mi" from "The Sound of Music" or "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid". The rod will get passed around as the music plays. When I stop the music, the person with the rod must cat...