The stage is set, students prepared, lines learned, costumes hemmed, sound system set up, programs printed, and clock is ticking. Now everyone just has to show up! With all the hard work that you do to make the concert great, you want to make sure that everyone knows about the upcoming program a...
In this fun video, the musicians of the band/group Pomplamoose use video and musical editing to cover the theme from the Angry Birds game. My students are still absolutely obsessed with Angry Birds and not a day goes by that someone doesn’t walk by wearing a t-shirt with some sort o...
I love using popular musical genres to help teach classroom concepts. Kids zero in when you pull up YouTube and get so excited to see real, live musicians performing right in front of them. Why not use a engaging medium (music videos/YouTube) to reinforce the very thing you’re teac...
I knew as soon as I started teaching that I wanted a class pet. I’m always looking for a way to make a personal connection with kids and kids love animals! Why not make a connection to what we’re learning in class at the same time? Here’s what I did to turn an ordinary fish i...
Whenever I get close to order time I pull out the catalogs I’ve been hoarding all year and I start to think again about how to spend my meager budget. I get only $100 a year from my fine arts dept and another $100 or so from my building. Of course the budgets aren’t allowed to be put together....
I’ve had such success with my recent Valentine’s Day Themed concert called “Love Bugs” and I wanted to share the bulletin board I used to promote the concert and tell parents about the upcoming show. This concert has come together pretty neatly with lots of fun songs and cute...
I’m always on the lookout for fantastic videos of musicians who excel at their instrument, are amazing singers, etc. When I stumbled across this video, I knew that it was a must-save because it’s pleasing to watch, has some great musical content, and is relaxing. Adam Ben Ezra is the mu...
I thought I’d share a few of my favorite music apps to use in your classroom that teach high/low and relate to teaching notes of the staff. So many teachers these days have iPads, iPods, or use their iPhones for classroom purposes. There are a lot of apps with relevance for the music classroo...
At my school students buy their own recorders and are encouraged to take them home to practice and play. That means that after music they have to take their recorders back to their classroom and put them in their backpacks to take them home. The question arose: How can we get the recorders to ...
Sometimes you need to mix up your music listening examples. We’re not doing our kids justice if we only stick to classical. We need to engage students with music that is culturally relevant and prepares them for a lifetime of music-making. I want to instill in my students a love for music an...
I stole this awesome idea from Jennifer Gragson, one of my fellow elementary music teachers in Kansas City, Kansas. I noticed one day when visiting her classroom that she had all of her learning objectives posted on her board, divided by grade, so that anyone who came in could see what they were w...
I had an upcoming Valentine’s Day concert with my Kindergarten kiddos and needed a perfect song to tie everything together. I did a little brainstorming, sat down at the piano, and came up with a silly little Valentine’s Day Song called “Love Bugs!” I knew I just had to ...