End of the Year YouTube Singalong Playlist

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Tomorrow is the last day of school for my District.  Woohoo!  My classes are always so crazy at the end of the year that I like to do something a little more active yet still musical.  So I created a YouTube playlist of 11 videos I found that are fun, sing-along (or move-along) type songs with the words and/or lyrics included.
These are the songs I included:

• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from "Mary Poppins" 
• Hakuna Matata from "The Lion King"
• There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, book by Simms Tabeck, narrated by Cindi Lauper 
• Under the Sea from "The Little Mermaid" 
• The Penguin Dance from "Mary Poppins" 
• Plain White T's Song for Sesame Street (if you've never seen this, it's hilarious!  I love it!)
• Going on A Bear Hunt (this is a great version of this!)
• If You're a Kid (a fun movement listening activity - students must stand up for this)
• Tooty Ta (keep the kids standing up, this one is hilarious!)
• Mylie Cyrus Party in the USA - all kids love this one!
• Katy Perry's Firework - standard summer musical fare :)

My students ate this up today and I particularly enjoyed it as well!  I hope you will too!  Feel free to share with friends, colleagues, and family.  NOTE: This would even be a fun playlist for kids on a road trip or bored waiting at a doctor's office!  

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New at Learn Me Music: Newsletter Subscription!!

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Learn Me Music is proud to announce a new addition - the new and exciting "Learn Me Music Newsletter!"  The bi-monthly LMM Newsletters will give you the latest ideas, resources, and even exclusive downloads and materials delivered right to your inbox.
Please put your info in to the form below to start receiving the brand new, information-packed, super fun Learn Me Music Newsletter. You will not receive more than 2-3 emails per month - no need to worry about me spamming your inbox!

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Boomwhackers Resources Courtesy of Music Therapist Kat Fulton

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I follow a lot of music therapists in the blog world, since I regularly teach self-contained autism classes at my current school.  Music therapists have amazing ideas for working with all kinds of people, not just people with special needs or who need "music therapy."  I think all music educators can benefit from a good dose of music therapy!  

Check Out My Favorite Music Therapists
Two of my favorite music therapists I follow are Rachel Rambach of Listen Learn Music and Kat Fulton of Rhythm for Good and Sound Health Music.  Both are extremely talented musicians, composers, arrangers as well as therapists!  Please check out their sites and I highly recommend you subscribe to their e-mail newsletters - they are full of amazing music education resources.

Kat Fulton's Boomwhackers
One of Kat Fulton's strengths and passions is her use of Boomwhackers in her therapy.  She shares some amazing teaching techniques for Boomwhackers through her two websites and her Facebook page.  She also arranges all kinds of popular tunes for Boomwhackers like Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" and Katy Perry's "Firework" (these links go to YouTube video performances of her arrangements on her SoundHealthMusic YouTube channel).

Facebook Boomwhacker's Promotion and Free Download!!
Right now, Kat Fulton is promoting her "Boomies" arrangements and teaching techniques through her Facebook page.  Click the "Free Scores" tab on her Facebook page and follow the links to watch a video and download her arrangements, teaching technique presentation, and visual aids.  I just downloaded it all myself and was thoroughly impressed!  What awesome, free resources from an expert!!  Thanks, Kat!

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Conversational Solfege Sight-Singing Flashcards

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Have you heard of Conversational Solfege?  I had never until a couple years ago when I heard John Feirabend speak at the Georgia Music Educators Conference in Savannah, Georgia.  His presentation rocked my world and I came home talking about his ideas to everyone who would listen.  My poor husband about strangled me because I wouldn't shut up!  Feirabend's approach to teaching music literacy was innovative, but also so common-sense; it made so much sense to me!  If you are not familiar with John Feirabend and his Conversational Solege, check out these following links...

A free excerpt PDF download from GIA Music from Conversational Solfege Level 1

All Conversational Solfege Products for Purchase through GIA Music

Conversational Solfege Course taught by John Feirabend at The Hartt School

In a nut-shell though, his approach is that you teach music literacy (reading music) much in the same way you would approach teaching a conversational French or Spanish class.  That makes total sense because music notation is simply another language, a language that communicates musical ideas.  When learning a new language, the Spanish class teacher would start by, for example, holding up a pencil and saying "el lapiz" and the students repeat, "el lapiz."  After doing that 10 times a day for a couple days, the students would start to know that a pencil is called "el lapiz."  In music, the teacher would show a musical pattern, such as the one to the left, and "read" the symbols out by singing the pitches, "Sol - Mi - Sol Sol - Mi."  The students repeat "Sol - Mi - Sol Sol - Mi."  After repetition, the students start "reading" the new language and can start to transfer the knowledge to unknown patterns.  The ultimate goal of Conversational Solfege is for students to be proficient enough to create their own musical patterns through composition and improvisation, using their new "language."

GIA Publications produces flashcards for Feirabend's Colversational Solfege and I highly recommend you purchase them as well as the teacher manuals and even CD.  There is a course this summer and anyone who has never heard him speak, he will rock your world as well.

However, in using the method, I discovered a need for digital flashcards.  I created my own iconic and traditional notation flashcards for the beginning pitches of sol, la, and mi.  These are my own patterns and obviously, there are probably some of the same ones as Conversational Solfege, because there are only so many musical patterns you can create with 3 pitches!  The flashcards you can download below are in PowerPoint format, but can be printed as well.

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TeacherPayTeachers Sale!!!

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Use the code to the left to get a discount on my products (and everyone else's products) on TeachersPayTeachers, this week only!

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Boomwhackers® Flashcards

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Boomwhackers®

Do you love using your Boomwhackers® as much as I love mine?  I finally, after 7 years of teaching music, bought 4 sets of Boomwhackers® and they have been the best, "funnest" addition to my classroom in recent years.  My students and I use Boomwhackers® for a plethora of music learning activities...

• Pitch - Boomwhackers®, just like xylophones and pan pipes, give a physical and visual representation of pitch by showing the relationship of length to pitch.  Boomwhackers® I have discovered to be an even better tool for teaching pitch than a xylophone because of the colors and how each student can be responsible for only one pitch.  
• Harmony - Teaching chords can be tricky for young students; however, Boomwhackers® allow students to play chordal accompaniments to a variety of songs by having "color groups."  The color groups once again give a visual representation of chords, allowing students to more easily grasp the aural difference in, for example, a C major chord and a G major chord.  
• Blues - I love teaching the 12-bar blues and Boomwhackers® are the perfect instrument to allow an entire class to participate in playing the I, IV, and V7 chords of a simple blues progression.  You could even extend it to have some students playing the progression, and have others improvising on recorders or xylophones on a blues scale.  
• Composition - Have students write out a simple rhythm, color in each notehead with a Boomwhackers® color, and then play the melody (meeting National Standard #4!).  This can be done in small groups or as a class activity.  If you use a dry erase board or an interactive whiteboard, you can revise, edit, and evaluate easily (National Standards #6 and #7...wink, wink!)
• Solfege and Scales - After playing, you can relate the instrumental to the vocal using the solfege syllables and scale degrees.  For many students, visualization is essential to singing pitch relationships correctly.  Boomwhackers® provide a great link between the absolute pitch of an instrument and the relative pitch of a voice.  

Since Boomwhackers® rely on colors, visual cues are not only beneficial but necessary.  I have created a set of colored note-name flashcards.  The flashcards include images of noteheads, chords/triads, and scale degrees. Each flashcard has a notehead with the pitch name, solfege step, and corresponding color.  The chord/triad pages include C major, F major, and G major chords. The last page shows an image of all Boomwhackers lined up to show the relationship of size, pitch, and color - this page is particularly is a great teaching aid. 

Download these flashcards, print in color, cut out (if desired), mount on construction paper individually or as a big poster, laminate, and instant pitch visual! Enjoy!

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Music Word Wall Posters

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Word walls are fundamental to good teaching.  They provide students with appropriate vocabulary to discuss a subject in a meaningful manner.  And they are a constant visual to help students organize their thoughts.  

Music word walls are often a challenge because there are many ways to organize musical concepts and music vocabulary.  I approach it from a standpoint of organizing the words by concept or subject.  So all the tempo words are grouped together on a "Tempo" word wall poster and "Dynamics" words like loud and soft are on another poster.  This gives visual separation to the music qualities, especially the expressive qualities, which I have found the young students have trouble with - my little ones confuse loud and soft with high and low all the time.  A word wall will help them distinguish the correct vocabulary to describe what they hear or what they want to hear in a piece of music.  

The National Standards for Music Education call for students to be able to describe music with appropriate vocabulary and a word wall aids your students in being able to do this successfully.  

As the school year winds down, many teachers are already thinking about the next school year and what they will change and do differently.  I hope you consider implementing a word wall in your classroom, if you have not already done so.  I have some word wall posters I have already created that you can download, print, enlarge, mount, laminate, and hang.  Easy peasy instant word wall!  

Download the MUSIC WORD WALL POSTERS 

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Welcome Back!

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After a 11 week hiatus, I am back to blogging.  On February 15, my family of three grew by 1 more as we welcomed our son, Graham, to the world.  I have enjoyed the past 11 weeks being a mommy and spending time with our newest family member as well as my daughter and husband.  I am grateful for my time at home and I will cherish that time forever.  

But life goes on and Monday of this week I returned back to work.  And with going back to work, I have returned to Learn Me Music as well.  To my readers, I apologize for the lack of new material for 11 weeks, but in the next few weeks, be looking for lots of new posts, ideas, and material!  My time at home gave me the opportunity for lots of brainstorming and I have many great future posts and resources coming for you to use in your classrooms!  

I am grateful for many things on this day.....a wonderful family, a secure job, my health (glad to not be pregnant anymore!), the sound of children making music, beautiful spring (almost summer-like) weather, this blog as my creative outlet, my readers.....thank you for allowing me to share!  Stay tuned.... :)

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Valentine's Day Project in Real Life!

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Valentine's Day Recorder Composition Project

So last week I posted a composition lesson for Valentine's Day.  Last Friday was the beginning of my new rotation and I tried the lesson out on my 3rd and 4th grade recorder students.  It was a big hit and a huge success!  We read the poem, clapped the rhythms, composed pitches to go with the rhythm, and played it - and it was super fun, for me and them!

Record Your Class' Compositions
I usually allow time to record our compositions and performances so I can post to my school's website but we ran out of class time with both of my classes today.  So I recorded their song for them so you could hear what a simple, sweet melody they came up with (with a little guidance from me!).

The quality of the recording is nothing to write home about and for that I apologize.  But you get the idea of what a fun, beneficial project this can be!

Let Students Take a Copy of Their Composition Home
Students are always asking me to "print that out so I can take it home and share it with my mom."  With using ActivInspire software, I can export any flipchart page as a JPEG file.  I know you can also do this PowerPoint as well as other SmartBoard and ActivBoard applications.  In whatever platform you are working, export the file you wrote on with all the notes, print the file as a JPEG, but choose to print 4 images per page.  The image gets smaller, but is still legible.  This saves ink and paper, yet each student is able to take home a copy of their work.  With Valentine's Day, that is especially sweet, as your students can play their parents or their "Valentine" a musical Valentine :)

Valentine's Day Composition - 4 Images Per Page

If you want to download this project for either ActivInspire or PowerPoint, follow the links below...

Download the Valentine's Day Composition Project for ActivInspire

Download the Valentine's Day Composition Project for PowerPoint 

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