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.

Sarasponda Orff and Rhythm Sticks Grade 5

The past two weeks in music 5th graders learned the Dutch folk song "Sarasponda". This song is made of nonsense words that are meant to imitate the sounds of a spinning wheel.

Students first rotated through a set of instruments including the Orff barred instruments, maracas, finger cymbals, and tambourines. We used this wonderful arrangement from bethsnotesplus.com. She is one of my favorite bloggers and always has beautifully clear notations and helpful lesson ideas. You can find her arrangement of Sarasponda here.

5B Sarasponda on Orff

5T Sarasponda on Orff

During week 2 students learned a rhythm stick routine to Sarasponda. I got the fun (and somewhat challenging!) routine from this video. I believe the linked video is of music education majors during an elementary education course.

5B Sarasponda Stick Routine

Two girls share their learned stick routine (sorry for the background noise).

These students got creative and two sets of partners crossed over each other during the routine.

Music In Our Schools Month

March is Music In Our Schools Month. To celebrate I created a new page on my blog titled "Why Music Matters". Visit this page to read more about why music is important in children's lives and in our schools. Please comment and let us know why music is important in your life. Happy music making!

NAfME Website 

2nd graders learn the ukulele!

2nd graders were so excited to learn a little ukulele this past week! They have been reading the book "My First Orchestra Book", and just finished learning about the String Family. Although the ukulele is not a part of the Symphony Orchestra, it does have strings. And what better way to wrap up the strings than with some actual string playing?! Students will learn A LOT more about the ukulele in 4th grade, where students play ukulele most of the school year during music!

New bongo drums: 2 drums in 1!

The music room got some new bongo drums! But they're not being used as bongo drums... They can be taken apart to become two separate drums! It's like two drums for the price of one. I got this idea from a drumming workshop with Bob Bloom.

Here's a link to the drums on Amazon: Remo Rhythm Club Bongos.

These drums are a great idea for families with multiple children who each want a drum, or teachers who want some inexpensive drums that younger grades can hit upon without worry to us! I have used these drums a few times and they are durable and the kids love the cute design. They are also very portable since the smaller drum fits into the bigger drum. The feet on the bottom of the drums allows the drums to sit right on the floor without muffling the sound, which makes it very easy with younger students.

Bongo drums attached (top) and unattached (bottom).

The inside of the drums where you can see how they are connected.

The drums once unattached and the parts (I just saved all these screws, etc. in a big bag and labeled it "bongo drum parts").

The little drum can fit into the big drum for easy storage and transport!

Orff with 5th grade

5th graders learned a "Winter Snowflakes" piece on the Orff barred instruments this January (Lesson found here, thanks O For Tuna Orff!). The form of the piece was ABA, with A being the "Winter Snowflakes" song and part B being one student improvising. Students rotated for each "part A" around the rug so they got to play the barred instruments, finger cymbals, and improvising glockenspiel.

Scott Joplin in 5th grade

5th graders have been studying composers through our "Composer Spotlight" this year. Since February is "African-American History Month" our composer spotlight is on the famous ragtime composer Scott Joplin.

Here are some videos we watched and discussed, of pieces by Scott Joplin:

Scott Joplin himself, on piano roll. Piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with holes punched into it.

A piano animation of the "Maple Leaf Rag".

Students then learned about a famous ragtime dance step called the "Castle Walk". We emphasized standing on our tiptoes and swaying.

Here are some of our 5th graders trying out the dance!