Take A Stand

I've shared a little song I wrote for our youngest students to help encourage and empower them to stand up against bullying behavior. Take a listen and share your feedback!

Playing Cups to Help With Rhythm Recognition

Students play a music game that focusing on creating, performing and responding.

New Multimedia Standards in Massachusetts

A few ideas to dive into the 2019 arts standards in Massachusetts with a focus on multimedia and music.

Kindergartner’s Sing & Play

Kindergarten is a time where students are deeply immersed in early reading and decoding strategies. This can be supported by reading and writing music. Students in Kindergarten place quarter notes above the words of a song. There is no staff on the paper, just empty space above the lyrics. This gets them used to reading …

Color Coding Beginning Recorder

One of the first opportunities for students to experience reading standard music notation consistently is on the recorder.  As I introduce it every year, I am trying to brainstorm ways to change large learning leaps into structured and scaffolded steps to access standard notation. One way I have attempted to bridge the leap from iconic …

Beginning Uke

Open tuning on the ukulele to work with younger kids is an approach to the instrument that has gained tremendous popularity in recent years.  This approach is a way to get young kids to play familiar songs on the instrument in the first lesson.  This method has a natural driving force because it supports quick …

Call & Answer Composing

Creating music in the classroom is an important part of music. Anyway students can independently work through creating music in different ways.  Iconic, standard, solfege, recording, are all fantastic ways to get students involved in the creating music. Second Graders started the year by creating call and answer musical ideas with solfege.   Students practiced …

Song Writing for Kindergarten

In Kindergarten, we have spent most of the year working on quarter notes, quarter rests and the letters in the music alphabet.  We've played games and had simple songwriting activities that have practiced these concepts individually.  Towards the end of the year we begin to put all of these concepts together by composing simple songs.  …

Preschool Composers?

When we think of composing music, preschool is not the first thought that comes to our mind.  As an early childhood teacher having to teach reading to Kindergarteners, I have been focused on how to break down music into a very simple form of notation.   Using color-coded bars on Orff instruments I am able to …

Hit the Target in Music

Learning targets are a big thing in schools these days.  Well, that gave me an idea for Orff instruments.   I have been really trying to think how to get kids to tap in the center of the bars where you get the best sound and the bars don't come flying off.  Since I have put …