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Everybody knows the alphabet song. Right? But can you do it backwards? LOL. Well, neither can we, but we tried it! Kindergarteners are working with ABC charts. We use poker chips to cover up one, two or three letters and then we sing through the chart leaving those covered letters as "shh" notes (later we'll call these rests). Students had a great time choosing letters and combinations of letters that might stump their classmates. This was a great time to practice letter recognition too!

Patriotic Songs

We love singing songs about America! At the beginning of the school year most of our Songs of the Week are patriotic. This week it is a new song called "Oh I Love America". You can listen to it and purchase it for use at home HERE. In this picture, first graders hold up the letters during the singing of this song. This is almost the WHOLE first grade class! There are 2 students not pictured here. I know! Tiny! But what they lack in size, they make up for in enthusiasm!

School Bus Rhythms

Second Graders are amazing rhythm readers! During the first week of school they reviewed all of the notes they learned last year and were able to read, write and perform new ones! In these pictures they are showing off how well they can identify patterns using quarter notes, double eighth notes and quarter rests. I play a rhythm on a drum and they mark it on their school bus with a clothespin. They did such a great job that we tried doing two measures in a row. Way to go Second Grade!!!

Welcome to the Music Room!

Welcome to the Music Room!

This is a view of the entire music room. We are fortunate to have a large room to learn in. The room is divided into basically three sections: keyboards, a space for moving and sitting on the carpet to see powerpoints and a singing area with chairs near the piano. Last year the music room got a bit of a facelift with the addition of new windows and a new dropped ceiling!

Each week we have a Song of the Week. This song is experienced by all students through listening, singing and/or moving. This bulletin board keeps track of those songs.

This is our music word wall. Music vocabulary words are organized by catergory and are always on display.

In this picture you can see my collection of boomwhackers (percussion tubes) and the music burger chart. The music burger helps us organize our thoughts about pieces of music we listen to. After we have organized our thoughts we transfer our music burger to paper and write a paragraph.