Even though I've been doing centers for a few years, I am still learning how most effectively to run a centers lesson in my music room. I've written a few blog posts about centers, which you can read here , but thought I'd offer five tips for doing centers in your music classroom. #1: Think about noise This week, I've been using materials from my fourth grade centers set, shown below: Two of the centers--the solfa manipulatives center and the instruments center--depend on students being able to hear. Here are a couple pictures of these centers: I knew they both involved being able to hear...but then I planned them to be next each other. I know, I know, it's silly that I would do that! But planning was tight and I was distracted and I just wasn't thinking. About one minute into the first center, as I sat at the solfa manipulatives center assessing students, I realized my mistake!  I did a couple things to help. First, I had my students at the instruments flip the......

Even though I've been doing centers for a few years, I am still learning how most effectively to run a centers lesson in my music room. I've written a few blog posts about centers, which you can read here , but thought I'd offer five tips for doing centers in your music classroom. #1: Think about noise This week, I've been using materials from my fourth grade centers set, shown below: Two of the centers--the solfa manipulatives center and the instruments center--depend on students being able to hear. Here are a couple pictures of these centers: I knew they both involved being able to hear...but then I planned them to be next each other. I know, I know, it's silly that I would do that! But planning was tight and I was distracted and I just wasn't thinking. About one minute into the first center, as I sat at the solfa manipulatives center assessing students, I realized my mistake!  I did a couple things to help. First, I had my students at the instruments flip the......

Even though I've been doing centers for a few years, I am still learning how most effectively to run a centers lesson in my music room. I've written a few blog posts about centers, which you can read here , but thought I'd offer five tips for doing centers in your music classroom. #1: Think about noise This week, I've been using materials from my fourth grade centers set, shown below: Two of the centers--the solfa manipulatives center and the instruments center--depend on students being able to hear. Here are a couple pictures of these centers: I knew they both involved being able to hear...but then I planned them to be next each other. I know, I know, it's silly that I would do that! But planning was tight and I was distracted and I just wasn't thinking. About one minute into the first center, as I sat at the solfa manipulatives center assessing students, I realized my mistake!  I did a couple things to help. First, I had my students at the instruments flip the......

A few days ago, I wrote about 10 strategies for rhythmic reading and writing , in hopes of giving you ideas for your year plan. Today I will blog about 10 strategies for melodic reading and writing! As in the last blog post, some of the ideas I will describe in this blog post, some will link to other blog posts, and some will link to freebies and other products. Here goes! #1: Ghost Melodies In this blog post , I wrote about how to do ghost melody composition on dry erase boards. This is a great precursor to having students listen for and begin writing specific pitches, like sol and mi. #2: Staff writing In this blog post , I wrote about how to introduce the staff to first graders. You could use chips ( math counting chips work well because they are see-through, and students can see the line running through the note) or you could use cute seasonal erasers like I did in the blog post. #3: Whole group stick to staff Once students can sing from stick notation patterns (with only rhythm a......

A few days ago, I wrote about 10 strategies for rhythmic reading and writing , in hopes of giving you ideas for your year plan. Today I will blog about 10 strategies for melodic reading and writing! As in the last blog post, some of the ideas I will describe in this blog post, some will link to other blog posts, and some will link to freebies and other products. Here goes! #1: Ghost Melodies In this blog post , I wrote about how to do ghost melody composition on dry erase boards. This is a great precursor to having students listen for and begin writing specific pitches, like sol and mi. #2: Staff writing In this blog post , I wrote about how to introduce the staff to first graders. You could use chips ( math counting chips work well because they are see-through, and students can see the line running through the note) or you could use cute seasonal erasers like I did in the blog post. #3: Whole group stick to staff Once students can sing from stick notation patterns (with only rhythm a......

Today I'm linking up with Lindsay Jervis' Monday manipulatives linky party, to blog about solfa manipulatives!  One of my favorite ways to have students use manipulatives is solfa manipulatives. I first came upon the idea of solfa manipulatives when I was studying in Hungary. My friend Bonnie presented about it to our level III class; she had learned about them in a previous level. I adapted the idea she presented a bit, and came up with laminated circles. Here is a picture of my students working with solfa manipulatives; usually I have them work individually, but this class was so big they had to work with partners! The idea of solfa manipulatives it that each student has a bag of his/her own solfa circles; I make 4 circles for every solfa the student knows. So if the students are working on "la," then they would have 4 sol circles, 4 mi circles, and 4 la circles. Each solfa is made in a different color, so they are easy to organize and easy to assess! What I really......

Today I'm linking up with Lindsay Jervis' Monday manipulatives linky party, to blog about solfa manipulatives!  One of my favorite ways to have students use manipulatives is solfa manipulatives. I first came upon the idea of solfa manipulatives when I was studying in Hungary. My friend Bonnie presented about it to our level III class; she had learned about them in a previous level. I adapted the idea she presented a bit, and came up with laminated circles. Here is a picture of my students working with solfa manipulatives; usually I have them work individually, but this class was so big they had to work with partners! The idea of solfa manipulatives it that each student has a bag of his/her own solfa circles; I make 4 circles for every solfa the student knows. So if the students are working on "la," then they would have 4 sol circles, 4 mi circles, and 4 la circles. Each solfa is made in a different color, so they are easy to organize and easy to assess! What I really......

Today I'm excited to once again link up with Lindsay Jervis for her Monday Music Manipulatives linky party, to blog about staff writing with erasers. Today will be a simple and short post about staff writing with polar bear erasers! My first graders have been deep in sol-mi preparation. I've been getting them used to finding lines and spaces on the staff, and then figuring out which line or space (3rd line, 4th space, etc.) Once students were comfortable with that (which took a few lessons of working on the skill for a few minutes), I handed a staff paper to each student, as well as two polar bear erasers, which I found on Oriental Trading . Then, I had students put one polar bear eraser off to the side, and the other on the second line of the staff (or wherever you want.) I circulated around the room to make sure students were all finding the second line. I gave the students a few more places to find with the first eraser--fourth space, third line, etc. and each time I checked......

Today, I'm excited to be joining Lindsay Jervis' linky party, to blog about autumn manipulatives for rhythm writing! I just love the dollar shelves at Target, not just for fun goodies for my daughters, but for teaching! Recently, I found bags of pumpkins, gourds, acorns, and leaves and decided I had to use them in my classroom! I bought seven bags and stored them in fun buckets I also found at Target, like this: Then I used them in learning centers with my first graders. They just learned ta and ti-ti, so at one of the centers, the students found the two buckets. Then, they emptied the buckets and individually created 4-beat patterns, using any of the autumn manipulatives they wanted. Sample patterns are below: The first pattern would be leaf acorn gourd acorn, and the second pattern (read from left to right as the student wrote it) would be gourd acorn pumpkin acorn.  After the students wrote the patterns, I told them to say the pattern while clapping the rhythm, and then afte......