This is one of my absolute favorite videos to show my first grade students and they LOVE to watch it. I stumbled across this my first year of teaching and have used it ever since! Kids love to see a song or story that THEY KNOW turned into a video or cartoon. This adaptation doesn’t dis...
You can never have enough tricks up your sleeve when you work with kids. It’s bad enough for classroom teachers who see the same 20-30 kids day in and day out. At least they have time to teach kids procedures that help to alleviate some of the crazy behaviors. They have time to work thro...
“Five Fat Turkeys Are We” is one of my favorite songs to teach to little folks during the holidays. It’s a fun song with a great story and most importantly it gets kids to think critically. I love asking kids questions and telling the story of the song in a way to get kids thinking critical...
Have you ever found yourself looking for that perfect costume to finalize your concert plans? I needed a simple and FREE alien costume for my upcoming concert called “Space Invaders” (learn about the concert here). What to do!? I work at an elementary school in a low-income ne...
If you love boomwhackers, then you need to see these videos! Plastik Music is a musical group that takes famous songs and arranges them for boomwhackers and a variety of other found/converted/created instruments. Here’s a quick blurb from their website: “From Mozart to Motown, Plasti...
I’m always looking for new tips and tricks to make concert preparation easier. I feel like I perpetually get burned out and stressed out when planning for a school performance because there are so many details to work out. Anything that I can do to alleviate some of the stress and worry is...
“Punchinello, you funny fellow!” This is a song that I do each year with my first graders because it’s so much fun and has some awesome curricular connections. In my district, one of our first quarter curriculum goals says that first grade students are supposed to learn a song...
I love reading about teaching practices and ideas and recently I found this great article by BusyTeacher.org about the “5 Things You Should Say to Your Class Every Day.” It got me thinking about what I’m saying to my students, what I’ve had to teach myself NOT to say, and what I’m not sa...
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I LOVE using videos to reinforce concepts that I’m teaching in class. Videos grab the attention of students and inspire them to look deeper and connect. I especially love it when I can use music videos of contemporary artists to explai...
I took a personal day for a doctor’s appointment last Friday and as I was preparing for the day I hit that slump of “What should I plan for this sub… who knows if it’s going to be a music person or not… Ugh!” I find it really hard to plan for someone who might have NO musical t...
One of the things that is required in our district curriculum is teaching first graders to identify ABA form in song. Last year I couldn’t find any songs in my Thanksgiving or Fall repertoire that I really loved that were easy for my kids to see ABA form. So, I drew on a song that my beloved ...
From the very first time I saw this video, I knew it would be perfect to show to students. “Around the World” is a famous song by the band Daft Punk and this is the music video that was created to accompany the song. The famous director/artist Michel Gondry (who has created s...