Keep Moving Forward – Changes to the Blog

I’ve also been “moving forward” here on the Make Moments Matter blog.  My hope has always been to provide great resources and ideas to make your life easier.  I want this blog to be a place you can look to when you need help with a difficult class, if you’re making long term plans for a grade-level, or if you just need some inspiration.  I’ve tried to be intentional recently about not just “blogging that cool new idea,” but to spend my time trying and pull together resources and organize them in a way that makes sense.  Read on to see some of the changes!

I love taking pictures of my students and documenting the fun activities going on around my classroom!  Of course I can’t share pictures of my students for privacy reasons, but I can definitely share some of the fun things we’re doing!  I set up an Instagram account a long time ago but hadn’t really been doing much until now!  I have plans to take and share more pictures on that platform and have challenged myself to share one fun teacher tip or trick at least once or twice a week with the hashtag #instamusiced  Follow my Instagram account to see the latest pictures when they are posted and/or search the hashtag #instamusiced on Instagram for all the little tips and tricks that I’ve shared so far.

I will admit that I went a little Pinterest crazy last weekend!  I created new boards, organized old boards, repinned some great things, found NEW ideas to pin all over the internet, and basically sat at my computer in amazement of all the great stuff out there on Pinterest!  I mean, how did people teach before Pinterest?  Where did they get all their ideas?

I probably added a couple hundred pins last weekend, no joke.  I really wanted to find resources for classroom management and picture/story books that I could use in the classroom.  I found great ideas for management and literacy learning in the classroom and along the way I stumbled across some super ideas for so many other boards!That’s one problem I’ve always had with Pinterest.  Stumbling across ideas is easy!  In fact it’s too easy.  Chase one great pin and then you find another one on different board and soon you’re “down the rabbit hole.”  So, instead I spent some time doing intentional  and focused digging on Pinterest.  The first thing I did was to search through profiles of the people that I follow.

When I initially follow someone I spend a good  amount of time looking through their boards and repinning stuff I love.  Then a week or so later I forget how awesome their profile was and never return to it.  Instead of going back to their Pinboards and combing through NEW material that they’ve found, I guess I just hope that all of their new pins show up in my newsfeed so I can snag ’em that way.  Well, the specific resources I needed for this search weren’t showing up.  So, I navigated through some friends’ profiles and I spent time looking through specific Pinboards (I mean, we name them and organize them for a reason, right?). I looked especially for classroom management and for literacy resources and I found them!  Then I did some additional searching in the Pinterest search bar and typed out what I was looking for.  I had to play around with keywords for a while, but eventually what I needed came up.  I came across some more boards and new Pinners that I had never seen!  It pays to do a little digging!

So, I added pins and added boards!  New boards that I added just this week were for Blogs to Follow, Centers, Drums, Folk Dance, Games, Improvisation, Middle School, Parent Contact, Potluck/Treats to take to school, and World Music.  And let’s be honest, it’s a three day weekend this coming weekend.  I’m sure I’ll spend a good chunk of that time pinning!If you’d like to benefit from the Pinning I’ve done you can check out my account here and Follow me to see all my pins!

A few months ago I did a complete overhaul of this blog and worked really hard to add tons of new resources and links!  I’m still trying to flesh out the site and add new things, but here are a couple fun little pages you might want to check out (there’s a lot to see if you look through the navigation bar at the top of this page and click on the drop down menus).

Rhymes A-Z 
Last year at my Orff Level III class a friend asked, “Hey, do you know of any one place with a lot of great nursery rhymes or poems to use for a project?”  I honestly didn’t know a great place to tell her to look.  There are lots of resources out on the internet for rhymes or basic kids songs, but so many of them have really annoying ads or are super difficult to navigate.  So, I created a page and added as many public domain and free poems as I could find.  I started out with most of the Mother Goose and nursery rhyme basics.  I’ve got a ton more to add when I get some time.  I’d also love to know if there’s a favorite poem of yours that you’d like to see me add!  I’m happy to put it on the list.

Grants and Scholarships
There’s a lot of free money out there if you know where to look.  In fact I wrote a whole blog post about how to find grants and scholarships that might benefit you!  I’ve also created an entire page of links with grants and scholarships that might be available in your area!  I tried to add the date the grant applications needed to be submitted so you know if you’re still eligible or not!

Music Education Blogs
This page contains links to over 50 great blogs and resources to check out.  When I was searching to add links for this page I found some bloggers who I had never heard of before.  I tried to separate by Orff/Kodaly leaning, General Music, Secondary Ed, and more.  Click the link above to see what I’ve dug up and/or pin the graphic at the top of that page to save for later!

As long as I’ve been blogging I’ve been on the lookout for a quick, easy, and efficient way to communicate with you all.  I’ve been trying to communicate mostly through Facebook but in the last year or so Facebook has been changing its settings so that the only way I can easily get information out is if I pay for an ad.  Who wants another ad!?So, I feel like I’ve finally, FINALLY found a great way to send out emails whenever a new blog post goes up or another great resource is found!  If you’d like to get on the list, just put your email in the box below and you’ll be signed up to get updates (of course you can unsubscribe any time you’d like).