All about my life

I found the coolest thing at a local and amazing toy store, Kite and Kaboodle! A Mozart magnet! And then I picked it up and realized it was also a MOZART FINGER PUPPET! Whaaaaat?! Last one there too! It was my lucky day today! You can check out finger puppets including Mozart, Beethoven, Veri and Puccini, as well a variety of many others including (Obama, Rosa Parks and Salvador Dali)  HERE  at the Unemployed Philosophers Guild website. The site is so fun and full of great gift ideas so check it out! My Mozart puppet will be great to use with Fun with Composers resource! Click HERE  to see that resource! My Mozart just loved coming home with me!  He got along with Lola right away!  After getting settled in, Wolfgang found my metallophone and started composing... And playing his compositions for us! He is so fun that guy! I can't wait for the kids at school to meet him! - Steph

Spring concert is coming up! I have a pair of tree characters in our musical this year. I started pinning ideas for tree costumes. Here are some projects that inspired me to get started! I found this cute costume idea  HERE .  These little girls look so cute in the costumes found  HERE . Made by GC featured a homemade tree costume found  HERE . They are all super cute, except my costumes need to be suitable and fit 12 year old boys! I found $10 hoodies at the good old Canadian store Giant Tiger and got started! I also found brown dress/canvas pants from Value Village. I painted some black lines to make the tree trunk. I did the same on the pants.   Next, dark green and lime green leaves were cut from felt. We glued lime green veins onto some of the dark ones to add texture.  Ta da! Here I am in one of our tree hoodies! - Steph

You have got to get FUN WITH COMPOSERS, if you haven't already! This is an excellent resource that many Music teachers here in Manitoba use. Deb Ziolkoski has created many amazingly engaging lesson plans that always include classical music, stories, movement, and fun! Her Fun with Composers series is a compilation of these creative lessons. I am curious to know though- is it in every Music teachers "Must Have" collection? It is definitely a must have of mine!  Click  HERE  to go to the Fun with Composers website to check out resources. There is currently a free lesson from the book on-line! The newly released "On s'amuse avec les compositeurs" is now available! Here are my kiddos moving to Dvorak's Slavonic Dance with our teacher candidate.  The Great Barnyard Dance!   What are your Music teacher resource "must haves"? - Steph

My grade 4 students went to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra this past week!  As we were preparing for the field trip, one of their goals was to identify instruments and organize them into the proper instrument families. I created this quick Smartboard group activity to activate their instrument knowledge prior to the concert.  Click  HERE to receive the FREE Smart Notebook file! With the help of some of our educational assistants, I created bundles of popsicle sticks that were each labeled with an orchestral instrument. Each student practiced grouping the instruments on their own. This was harder for them without the pictures of the instruments, especially since many of my students are EAL learners.  The following class we reviewed photos and sounds of each instrument, to help them with the instrument words. They did the popsicle stick activity again. Working on it... Not quite...  Ah, there we go...   After attending the Orchestra concert, I had stud...