Dr. Seuss Week: Horton Hears a Who

To celebrate "Read Across America" day our school decided to "Seussify" the school on Friday and have Dr. Seuss related activities. Each classroom also chose a book that they studied the week leading up to Dr. Seuss day. Music and Art's book was "Horton Hears a Who".

We started the week making a whole school mural lead by the wonderful school art teacher Mrs. Divis. The mural used each student's painted pink hands to represent the clovers in the clover field where Vlad Vladikoff drops the Whoville clover. Then Horton must search through millions of clovers until he finds his Whos again. On our mural he has just found them!

A slideshow of the mural-making process.

2nd and 3rd graders learned a dance I created to 'Slavonic Dances Op. 46, No. 8' by Antonin Dvořák. Students pretended to be Whos in Whoville and had to let Horton and the Jungle of Nool animals know that they were there. During the loud parts of the song students walked around the circle shouting "WE ARE HERE!" and playing egg shakers and sleigh bells. (We talked about how we want to use our "inside/fake shouting" voices so we don't hurt our vocal chords.) During the soft parts of the piece we silently took 3 steps in, twisted 3 times, then 3 steps out and twisted 3 times.

3S "We Are Here!" Dance

2S "We Are Here" Dance (after this video is when I decided to talk about not harming our vocal chords by actually shouting... at least Horton would have heard us! :-)  )

Kindergarten and first graders did their own version of a "We are Here" activity to music from the "Horton Hears a Who" movie. Students chanted "WE ARE HERE!" during the sung parts of the song, and pretended to play different instruments during the instrumental part. This was a 'follow the leader' dance/activity.

1R follow the leader "We are Here" activity.

Music we used for the K/1 activity.

Here are some pictures from my classroom for Dr. Seuss day.

My composer spotlight was transformed into an "Instruments of Whoville" display. Look at all those funky instruments they play so Horton and the other animals can hear them!

Our new composer spotlight is Ludwig Van "Who"thoven instead of Beethoven.

The beautiful clover field mural in the music/art hallway.

Ms. Moon as a Who and Mrs. West as The Grinch!

You can view more photos from the whole school here and the photo booth here.

January Lessons Preview: Grades K/1

Below is what grades K/1 will be doing in music the month of January:

We will start off with a lesson on losing baby teeth and sing a cheerful song from MusicK8 called "Bye Bye Baby Tooth." Then students will begin learning how to count simple rhythms of quarter notes and quarter rests. They will apply this knowledge by composing their own rhythms using big paper lips and paper teeth. They will line up teeth next to each other for quarter notes, and leave gaps for quarter rests, being able to clap and share their compositions.

The following week students will learn a chant called "Loose Tooth" and add classroom instruments, such as the triangle, to certain words.
The third week in January students will talk about how colors feel, sound, and move through the book "My Many Colored Days" by Dr. Seuss. Students will listen to music representing different colors and move their bodies with colored scarves to match the music.

Photo Credit