Nursery Rhymes in Kindergarten Music

Kindergarten kids have been having a great time learning Nursery Rhymes...

(some in multiple versions!)

Stories, Songs, and movement!

Wooly Cat's Musical Theater provides some fun twists on the familiar rhymes, while "Gettin' Down With Mother Goose" has fun songs to add.  Books by Iza Trapani, Kim Eagle and others round out the resources for this unit!

1st Graders Experience African Music Unit

Using songs, games, instruments, and stories that African children experience has proven to be a lot of fun for my 1st grade learners!

We talked about "call and response" 

and related it to the "I sing, You sing" songs we did through all of Kindergarten music. 

We had lots of fun with the game Obwisana and especially enjoyed using the shaker eggs!

The Lion Game was another fun experience, and one that can easily be played with a circle of friends and a rock or something else to pass.

We learned how to make an African drum and heard other instruments along with the story "Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters" in the Reading Rainbow video with host Levar Burton.

Experiencing the African instruments that we have in our classroom was a lot of fun!

We're ending the unit with a Sound Story... "Ananse and the Sticky Glue".

2nd Graders Exploring How Music Can Help to Tell a Story

Music That Helps To Tell A Story is one of my favorite units!

I decided to start our year of learning with this.

2nd graders began by adding instruments 

to the familiar story "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" to create a sound story.

Our next activity was to listen to the Book/CD of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokoviev.

Students were able to identify the instruments used to portray the character themes. They will be able to make connections with this knowledge in our next unit.

Currently they are viewing "Peter and the Wolf" movie by Chuck Jones, which was an Emmy Award Winner. Again, students are making wonderful connections with things they've already learned!

I'll be using a Kahoot to check for understanding at the end of our Peter and The Wolf activities.

We will be doing more in depth discussions of the role music plays in films.

We'll also explore what kinds of clues music can give to help a story.

I'll be adding music from the Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky to my reading of 

"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak.

This book is familiar to many students, and they compare their prior experiences with this book with the experience of added music.

Finally, they will hear music from the same orchestral work in Fantasia 2000 and discuss how the same music helped to tell two very different stories.

I plan to use FlipGrid again for feedback from the students.

A New Year...A New Music Room

 SO EXCITED
To welcome students into our new music room-
To teach in ONE room and have all my resources there!
SO THANKFUL
To the community of McFarland-
To have the privilege to teach in the McFarland School District!