Thanksgiving in the Music Room

Since Thanksgiving is just a couple weeks away, today I'm going to blog about my favorite Thanksgiving activities for the music room.

Thanksgiving this year happens to fall on my birthday, so I'm feeling especially festive. :) Here goes!

Turkey rhythms

I wrote this blog post about using foam turkey feathers and paper plates to build rhythm turkeys. Here is a picture of my students working on it. It was a fun group activity and a great way to practice ta and ti-ti! You could use it with any rhythmic concept.

Grateful

I found this book on Pinterest last year, and finally got around to ordering it for next week's classes. It features a beautiful song by Art Garfunkel, and illustrations by John Bucchino and Anna-Liisa Hakkarainen. Excited to use it as a way to discuss meaning of lyrics, discuss what it means to be thankful/ grateful, and improve listening skills! (Note: I first ordered the book on Amazon, but it's out of stock, so I then reordered it on Books-A-Mllion. You can see the link by clicking on the picture of the book below):

Native American music

Native American can be taught any time of the year, but if you're looking to do a unit on Native American music, Thanksgiving is a great time to do so! I just finished researching and creating sets about the Chippewa, Iroquois, and Ottawa tribes, and it was musically so interesting to look at the similarities and differences in the songs, when looking at songs from specific tribes. I found quite a few gems that are great for teaching low la, like this song, which is from the Chippewa/Ojibwe tribe:

I just found this website that has several great links and resources for teaching about Native Americans during Thanksgiving in a culturally responsive way.

The bundled set below includes several songs like the one above, slideshows to help teach musical concepts from the songs, as well as background for each tribe, including customs, geography, and more; you can also buy the sets individually by tribe.

Looking for more Thanksgiving activities for your music room? Check out this Pinterest board:

Looking for more games and activities for Thanksgiving? Check out these:

 

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!