All about my life

Yesterday was the last day of school! Yippeeeeee! When school is almost done and it's always nice to find easy, low key and interesting activities to do with the kiddos that are also at least somewhat educational! I found some really interesting videos of how different music instruments are made.  I had grade 4, 5 and 6 students watch the videos and complete (in writing) the following statements... "Something I knew before watching this video was..." "Something I learned from watching the video was..." "Something I found interesting was..." Here are the three videos that grade 4-6 students responded to last week. How It's Made- Cymbals How It's Made- Acoustic Guitar Making a Djembe Enjoy! -Steph

Oh my gosh! I just realized I haven't posted in 3 weeks! Ah! As things are beginning to wind down, (only 5 days left!) I thought it would be perfect to have the children do centre work. It has been the perfect thing to do in June!  Grade 1 and 2 students have been doing a rotation of three centres during the last two Music Classes. #1 ROBOT RYTHMS Check out the "how to"  HERE #2 NOODLE RHYTHMS #3 WRITE A RHYTHM I can't take credit for any of these ideas though! Lego rhythm activities are all over the internet! I've seen many noodle activities on Pinterest, but my favourite is Mrs. King's ,  over at her blog. And my friend Renee over at       The Reading Corner  swears by Dollarstore page protectors for numerous activities in her classroom! Stay Tuned for the new additions to this week's centres! -Steph

While most of you music bloggers are blogging about finishing up school, we just finished our grade 4-6 Spring Concert! Here are some highlights, as well as some homemade costume ideas that you might like! Grade 6 Orff Club performed #9 from the Orff Schulwerk, volume IV, as well as an arrangement of Some Nights! Next up was our guitar club, who performed "I Will Wait" by Mumford and Sons! Up third was our grade 4/5 Orff club who performed an arrangement of I Knew You Were Trouble and an Eric Corbiere piece entitled "Hidden Path". Here our recorder players are doing a movement section for "Hidden Path". And on to the musical! This year we did Thwacked! By Dave and Jean Perry, published by Shawnee Press. The kids loved it! Click  HERE  to view the musical score and have a listen to their tracks! We had a couple of ideas of our own, including two acting trees! Click  HERE  to see my process for creating the tree costumes! We had beautiful renaissance costume...

I've fallen in love with Thinglink! It's like interactive Powerpoint.  I am working on some traditional drumming songs from Ghana with my grade 1 and grade 3 students. I will post about the resource I often use for African drumming later this week.  It's so important to give students some context when learning songs from different cultures! I will otften show some videos, photos, maps, share stories, etc. to give more meaning and in-depth understanding to what we are learning. Using Thinklink is perfect because you can put all sorts of different information in ONE PLACE! Here is a photo of the Thinglink I created for students about West African Drumming: First, I selected a free use photo for my Thinglink. Then, I added touches (those are the question marks). For each touch I could add a link to anything on the internet (videos, definitions, sound clips, photos, etc.) and also include some of my own text. Click  HERE  to use my West African Drumming Thinglink with yo...