"Oh, the Places You'll Go!..." with Bulletin Boards!

Sorry - had to do a play on words! I actually have two themes for music each year: one for primary and one for intermediate. Today, I'm going to link up with David Row's bulletin board party and share my primary theme decor. 

Last year, the primary building chose Dr. Seuss's theme "Oh, the Places You'll Go." It's such a fun theme! The kindergarten music program was all about Dr. Seuss and his books. If you're interested in a music program like this, let me know. It was great for everyone!

This year, I decorated for the theme with balloons. I was lucky to find a great door poster to go along, with it, too, from Music in Motion. Here is my door (sorry it's kind of blurry):

Above my door, I printed and laminated some cute "welcome" music notes from Music and Technology. Check them out here - they're free!
Welcome to Music sign

I love this quote! "Music ignites the imagination, elevates the mind, and lets the spirit soar." Plus, it has composers floating in the balloon basket - haha! 

Anyway, here's my bulletin board. It is huge and covers a ton of wall space. Each balloon has something that the students can participate in or become with music. I put several of our school's music activities on balloons, as well as careers such as DJ, composer, church musician, etc. It was super easy to do and hopefully a positive and inspirational start to the year. 

Changes!

Some big changes are happening in my music room this year! I have been asking (and nagging) for this for the past year or so. I had my hopes up last year, but it's finally come true this summer. 

.........................................DRUMROLL PLEASE...........................................

IT'S CARPET! WOOO-HOOO!

I know this probably isn't as exciting as you thought it would be. However, I have been hinting at carpet for a year now. The tile floor was falling apart, it was extremely slippery and it was always dirty. It was always difficult to do dances, relay races, and activities because the kids didn't want to sit on a dirty floor or they would try to scoot around/slide when teachers weren't looking. It was just a disaster!

I'm excited for carpet and the new adventure it brings. I'm planning on taping my rubber dots to the floor for lining up spots and purchasing Sit Spots for seating arrangements. Check out 2nd Grade Snickerdoodle's blog post about them:

There are going to be so many new things in my classroom this year (aside from the carpet, of course!). I thought I'd share a few of the things I'm most excited about.

Noodle Ponies

At the Artie & Denise conference this summer, I had the opportunity to meet Tracy King. She presented a wonderful workshop all about centers. She also shared her noodle ponies! I couldn't wait to get home and put together some of my own. My cat, Eleanor, was NOT very helpful, so this took longer than necessary, but I'm super excited to use them!

Thanksgiving Fun

The day before Thanksgiving is always a toughie for the kids. We get out early and they are super charged. I was checking out the Music in Motion website and came across something perfect for that day! It's a story book with the song "Over the River." So cute! It tells the tale of a family of turkeys going to Thanksgiving dinner and trying to avoid the farmer. There's a happy twist at the end, though! Also, I found this awesome hat to go with it! Again, my cat was not very helpful with this at home, as you can see in the picture. 

Instruments

After attending the workshop and digging into more materials I had, I have a great plan for more instrument play in my classroom. I also acquired a couple of large congas from the MS band director to store in my room. He was gracious enough to let me store them, as he has brand new ones. I also used my intermediate budget to purchase more bongos, sound shapes and rhythm sticks. Can't wait to use all of these and teach more beat/rhythm with all of my students.

Music TOMS

Just a quick post for today - I wanted to share with you something that has been on my wishlist for awhile. A few years ago, I had just discovered TOMS and the One for One philosophy. Basically, TOMS strives to make unique shoes and provide a pair shoes to a child in need for every pair bought. I purchased a pair of black classics and didn't really like them. Same with some pink flats I purchased a year later. However, I had been itching for the music shoes they had made. However, they were sold out already - DARN!

However, I just saw them come back on the market last week. I posted them to the Music Teachers group board I follow on Facebook to put the word out. I didn't realize they would have a following, but I know I gave TOMS a ton of business with posting those music shoes! 

I thought I would continue to share and shout the love to TOMS. Here is a picture of mine - they just came in the mail yesterday :) 

The right foot is more snug than the left, but everyone says they stretch out. Can't wait to sport these at school this year!

INTERESTED? Just click on the picture below and it will take you directly to the TOMS website. I'll stop "singing" their praises now!

Five Favorite Pins of July

Sorry I've been MIA recently. I've been in my classroom creating and putting so many new things together for fall. Today, I'm linking up with Mrs. Miracle's Music Room to show my Five Favorite Pins of July.

#1: Mystery Song Music Listening: Bundle #2

I absolutely LOVE Cori Bloom's products. Plus, she is super nice and quick to respond if you have comments and questions. She has been creating these listening bundles for awhile, but I super excited about the mystery songs. It's a great way to break out and let the students share their ideas while introducing them to a variety of music. Her most recent bundle is great for Christmas and winter - the graphics are beautiful!

#2: Singing with a Sub (Sub Plans for the Music Classroom)

Aileen Miracle has recently been updating some of her files and this one is awesome! I purchased her "Wild About Music" sub plans in the spring and thought they were great stand alone lessons. The updates and additions she's made this pack are wonderful. There are ideas for listening, movement, centers, etc. I can't wait to purchase this in the next few weeks. 

#3: Instrument Petting Zoo

I have been wanting to have an instrument petting zoo for my primary students ever since I was student teaching. I've never figured out how to do it, though! This is a great pin to David Row's blog about an instrument petting zoo. He also just released a product in his TPT store with more guides and information. I know I will use this somehow in my classroom this year, either for conferences, back-to-school night or in a lesson. 

#4 Star Spangled Banner word cloud

This year is the 200th anniversary of the Star Spangled Banner. My 4th graders have the yearly tradition of putting on the Veteran's Day program. This is a great way to practice the words to the national anthem, while also displaying their creativity with technology. This Tagxedo was created by another music teacher I met through an elementary music education chat on Twitter. Genius!!

#5: Stretchy band ideas

Earlier this year, I created my own stretchy band for movement. Here's the post if you'd like to make your own (it literally takes 10 minutes!): Stretchy Band tutorial

Anyways, I happened upon this pin with several ideas for using the stretchy band. I struggle for ideas with my younger students and the website really gives some awesome ideas. 

Only 1 more month until school starts - gosh, it's flown by! I've already been in my room and starting putting things together. Hopefully, you're finding some great ideas from pins, blog posts, workshops, etc. to bring to your music class this year. Take care!

Puppets - a newfound love!

Over the past few years, I've heard teachers swear up and down that puppets are awesome. I discovered some in my music room my first year, but didn't really use them. I guess I just feel weird introducing a puppet to students. However, this year, I started using beat buddies. If you're not sure what beat buddies are, they can be any little stuffed animal that students can pat on their lap, arm, etc. to keep the beat. I was blessed when my mom found about 40 of them at a local consignment shop. The kids LOVE them! I couldn't believe it! They are also a good motivator for those younger students who have trouble with behavior. Here's a picture of what I tend to use...they are beanie babies from McDonalds, but anything smaller will work!

These beat buddies really pushed me to try out puppets. When I attended the Artie & Denise conference in June, Artie used so many puppets. It was great! She made literature connections, solo singing, and introductions to styles. I quickly started surfing the web for what I could use in my classroom. Oriental Trading is only an hour away from us, so this company gets products to you FAST. Also, they have such variety! Here are some things I picked up from OTC:

Horse finger puppets! These are great for students to identify and practice form for "The Wild Horseman." After using their puppets, the students can move on to using noodle ponies or candy cane horses in groups to show the form. So fun - check it out here!

Parachutes and Ribbons and Scarves, Oh My!

Large jungle animal puppets are great for teachers to use AND the students! I'm excited for all of the solo singing opportunities these will provide. Also, any puppets can be left at centers for students to do vocal explorations or sing songs with their puppets. 

Cat and dog finger puppets - so many possibilities! I can see the puppies being used for Doggie, Doggie and kitties for Naughty Kitty Cat. The main reason I chose these is for Rossini's "Cat Duet." Artie had one kitty for one hand and another for her other hand. These moved up and down with the melody when it was that kitty's turn during the duet. It's so funny! Plus, it is a great way to introduce opera to kids and show melodic differences. Let me know if you'd like to see the video from the workshop - it is one of my favorite lessons!

I also purchased some puppets at the end of the school year. I originally saw these on Music a la Abbott's blog post about puppets. I instantly fell in love - they are so quirky! Plus, they are on a stick which makes them a little easier to handle. The kids thought they were funny and loved naming them. Educational Insights now has fish and dinosaur puppets on a stick. Can't wait to add those to my collection as well.

My last puppet isn't really a puppet. I was at Half Price Books the other day (I am a HPB junkie!) and stumbled upon some interesting stuffed characters. There were finger puppets and stuffed animals from The Unemployed Philosophers Guild. My husband (when he was a teacher) had little finger puppets for famous composers and graciously passed them on to me. I didn't realize that they made larger stuffed animal models, too! The company has several new finger puppets (Elvis, Louis Armstrong) and composer favorites in both puppet and character size. I ended up purchasing the Mozart and Beethoven stuffed animals on eBay for the price of one from the website. Mine are still brand new, just cheaper. They have a smaller information card and play one of the composer's famous pieces. Here they are - ready to go to school. 

I know my primary students will love to check these out when we learn about composers. I plan on bringing them out when we read stories, color composer bios, listen, do movement, etc. I'm really excited to use Mr. Beethoven first with this awesome bundle from The Yellow Brick Road:

Do you use puppets or stuffed animals in your room? Are they something only your primary students enjoy or do the older kids still ask for them?

Symbaloo

If you've read my blog posts before, you know that our district is 1:1 with a huge emphasis on technology. All students have laptops in the classroom, as well as 2 computer labs in the building and several mobile iPad carts. Here is my previous post on some ways I incorporated technology in the classroom this spring: 

Long time - no see! Let's talk technology.

Today, I'm going to dive in a little more to the world of Symbaloo. It is available on it's own, but our district uses the Symbaloo EDU platform. It's free - which rocks - but you can also upgrade to premium for a cost. Symbaloo is basically a board with all of your bookmarks on it. Our kids use this all the time, so they are very comfortable with it. Each grade has their own board, which is then divided by teacher. Our technology integrationist updates the webmixes and can quickly add, delete, or copy tiles. I like to have control of my own (since I do a lot of switching and adding), so she has my own webmixes linked to my picture. Here is a screen shot of how the boards look from our district:

Each grade has their tile (specials is the bottom right blue tile) and then the rest of the board is filled with quick resources for the students to use in class. 

Here is the Specials webmix. Our tech person has uploaded our school picture as the launch for our pages. The art teacher links tiles below, while mine are launched from clicking on my face. The students do enjoy seeing my school picture each year - ha!

And here's my landing page! As you can see, I have tiles that lead to other boards of the same nature. This helps the students know where categories are. You can attach pictures as well to your tiles. Those that are already linked up with Symbaloo have pictures available. If not, you can save and add a picture of your own to the tiles. 

Now, I'm going to go through how I create, organize, and code tiles. 

Once you've created your account, go to the top right corner and click on the black/white "plus size" - this is used to add a webmix or "category."

Choose your name for the webmix, like Composers, Orchestra, Christmas, etc. From there, it leaves you with a screen full of grey tile space. Click on a space to add your tile. 

Here, you can add the website, source, etc. that you want on the tile. Name your tile, click "show text" so that you know what the tile is and choose a color. If the site already has a picture, it will pop up - otherwise, you can save and upload your own. Click "save" and it will pop up. You can move it around wherever you'd like. 

As you create more webmixes with tiles, your top bar will start having tabs. Anytime you want to save or update, go to the top middle bar and click on the circling arrow. This will update and save your webmix on the tabs above with a lock picture. You can also share or delete with the middle bar. You can only edit if a webmix if does not have the lock on it. This way, you don't lose all of your information if you make a change. 

From there, have fun organizing, arranging, and linking. Here is my "composing" tab and it's arrangement. The tabs for my intermediate students are on the far right. The top line of tabs are for primary and the others are organized by different composing aspects. 

From there, click on the top middle's bar "greater than" picture to share your webmix. You can write it on the board, email it to all of your students, link to your teacher's page for at home music learning - the possibilities are endless! The students click on the link and are instantly taken to your Symbaloo. If they click on a picture, it will take them there immediately - no typing in, searching, going to wrong sites or stuff like that. Wonderful! The whole process doesn't take that long to set up and get going, trust me! My main webmix is called "Elementary Music." Click here to check it out:

http://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/elementarymusic2

I also use this to link to GoogleDocs. You can make the tile the link to a Google form, presentation or something else for a quick assessment. I've also linked it to Padlet and webquests for students to share their learning and ideas with each other. So many possibilities!!

There are many more features and playing around that you can do. If you have questions about Symabloo, creating webmixes or finding fun, appropriate music sites, let me know! Hope you've enjoyed my tech tip for today :)

Teaching Tips from the Trenches

I will be starting my 4th year of teaching in the fall. While I'm still a newbie, I have learned a thing or two to share with others in my short time teaching. I'm excited to learn and share tips with other music teachers through Pursuit of Joyfullness' linky party. 

Pursuit of Joyfulness: Teaching Tips from the Trenches

The one tip I'd like to share is to stay fresh. Granted, I've only been teaching for 3 school years, but I constantly try to bring new ideas and lessons into my music classroom. There are favorites that I use throughout the year, but I love sprinkling in something new. I feel like this is something that wasn't done in the past. Here is my memory of music class back in the day:

1. Walk in

2. Find your seat on the line

3. Back row grabs books; front row grabs book

4. Turn to page ......

5. Sing song - talk about paragraph at the top of the page

6. Turn page

7. Rinse and repeat! (okay, not rinse, but you get the idea!)

8. Return books to shelf

9. Line up

Now, routine is great in any class. However, I don't think music should be that predictable from Kindergarten through 5th grade. In 4th grade, we learned how to square dance. Otherwise, this was music class for all of my elementary years. My music teacher was always smiling, had mad piano skills and put on large musical shows. She's still teaching today and is wonderful at her craft in many ways. However, my memories are not really those that I want my students to have of music when they leave elementary school. So, I strive to stay fresh!

I find it hard to believe that there are no means for teachers, even music teachers, to find new ideas and resources. I am from a small town in the midwest, but I strive to reach out and discover new things for my classroom. Here are some ways that I recommend to stay on top of the world of music education and in touch with the needs of your students.

• Technology
• I am blessed to be open to technology. It has allowed me to connect with teachers all over the world and share ideas. Most of these ideas are FREE! woo-hoo!
• Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest - so many ways to link up, see pictures, post comments, advocate, etc. I get most of my ideas from Pinterest. I have numerous boards separated for all aspects of teaching. Check it out! Mrs. Skog's Pinterest
• New resources! Most companies (Music K-8, Music Express, Hal Leonard, Activate!) will post new publications and information online before the catalog can get to you. Don't be a stranger to these websites! They also have discounts, sales and free shipping offers.
• TeachersPayTeachers, Teacher's Notebook, and other selling websites offer quick and easy ideas, worksheets, powerpoints, etc. to teachers. Each seller has free items, but also great products they've created by teachers FOR teachers. This website also has sales throughout the year and bundles to save money. 
• Apps are also a great way to reach students. There are so many about music, many of which are free for a demo of the real app. My kids love being a 1:1 district and squeel over iPads. I've used them as a whole class or individually. Same thing with computers! The kids are instantly ready to learn and see what you have to show them. Test it out in your classroom!

• Professional Development
• In Iowa, teachers are required to have so many credits every few years for recertification of their license. Music Education classes are a great way to get these credits and learn more about your craft.
• Many teachers also take certification classes such as Kodaly and Orff levels to learn more and gather new techniques and ideas. I hope to take Kodaly certification in the next few years.
• Online options - while many online classes and tutorials are aimed at general classroom teachers, you can still learn a lot from courses about development, differentiation, and assessment. Just make sure you choose something that will help you in your classroom immediately or in the near future. Our district offers develop in the summer, but rarely does it pertain to something I'd use on a regular business.

• Workshops
• I cannot say enough about workshops! They are amazing and really light the spark for me each year. Most music education workshops last an entire day, but some are conferences with multiple days.
• Check out your state's music educators website or different associations. Our state has several Kodaly and Orff workshops during the school year, as well as a state conference for choral directors in the summer.
• Many companies and organizations promote online, too. West Music, Hal Leonard, and such have summer conferences throughout the country. This year, I went to the best workshop I've ever attended in Branson. Denise Gagne and Artie Almeida held it. It was a bit more expensive, but the knowledge I gained was well worth it. Here are 2 photos I took of one of my new creations from the workshop I just attended:

 These are Noodle Notes! The idea came from Tracy King, "The Bulletin Board Lady." They are pool noodles cut into different sizes for rhythm work. The students can do dictation or compose with them. 

Tracy uses them in centers, but I hope to be able to use them in large groups as well. Here are the 3 different shapes I created. There are rests on the back side of the green and blue. The red quarter note also has 2 eighth notes, 4 sixteenth notes, and a quarter rest on different sides.

• Subscriptions 
• Sign up for as many subscriptions as possible!
• While I don't always order products from different sellers, I am part of their list server. Music K-8 has an idea bank and offers several free songs and activities throughout the year. Plank Road Publishing also sends out free demos and chances to listen before buying so you are aware of the product you are getting.
• This is also another place you can find out about products, hear reviews and grab some new books, props, and music for the classroom.
• Follow blogs! Many bloggers have linky parties (like I'm participating in right now) and blog hops where they offer great ideas on behavior, programs, assessment, anything you could want! They also offer freebies occasionally for loyal followers

• Kids
• Talk to your students! They are the quickest way to see what excites them and what is "out of style"
• Listen to the radio - when we play freeze dance, I try incorporating some of their favorite songs to dance to. If the words are suggestive, I use the KidzBop versions that are appropriate.
• Our district is also focused on student centered learning. Giving your students some leadership in the classroom will quickly make them excited to be in music class. It might not always go according to your lesson plans, but they are taking learning into their own hands. What's fresher than that?

Wow - that was a lot of information once I got started! I know I am forgetting something really important. However, I hope you are able to pull something out and give it a try in the future. I want to always be on top of music education because I want the best for my students. What ways do you stay fresh and new in your classroom each year? I love hearing feedback, so please share an idea or two. Plus, don't forget to go through and read all of the "Teaching Tips from the Trenches." Have a great weekend!