Halloween Fun!

Halloween is by far one of my favorite holidays during the school year. There are so many fun songs and games you can do to reinforce music concepts, I often can't fit them all in. This year I added a few new games/activities to my list. Here are a few of them.

 

5 Little Pumpkins:

The 4th graders performed "5 Little Pumpkins" on the Boomwhackers. I found the lesson at http://elementarymusicresources.blogspot.com. The lesson was created for a SMART board. I have an Activ Board, but was able to copy and paste the picture of the music notation and that was enough to teach the lesson. The color-coded pumpkins made it easy for the 4th graders to read their parts because we haven't covered all the note names of the treble clef staff yet (that comes in the spring with recorders). Here is a video of them performing their song after only 2 practices!

Candy Wrapper Rhythms:
I found a great Activ Board flipchart using candy wrappers to compose. I used that flipchart to create my own games and rhythm assessments for multiple grade levels. Over Valentine's Day and Halloween I always ask students to bring me their candy wrappers so I can add on to my collection. I then laminate them so they are more durable. For one activity, I put students into groups with a bag of candy wrappers. Depending on the rhythms they know, we talk about the different rhythms each candy has. For example, a Snickers could be a Ti-Ti. A Milky Way for my younger students would be ti-ti ta, and for my older students could be tika-ti. In their groups, I clap an age-appropriate rhythm, and they work together to create that rhythm using the wrappers. After a few practices, I hand out a worksheet and they each compose 2 measures of their own. Below is the worksheet I use and some pictures of the kids working in their groups. I also play a game the day after Halloween where they have to sort out their candy into different candy bags based on the rhythms. The first team to correctly sort all of their candy wins.

 

"Pantomime" by Kabalevsky:
I attended a music workshop this fall where Sharon Bursch (author of the Freddie the Frog books) presented. She introduced me to this activity. 1st, we discussed what pantomime means and how it differs from acting. Then, I gave an example of how to pantomime carrying a large pumpkin. We discussed what I did and then, while listening to "Pantomime" by Kabalevsky, the class pretended to be carrying tons of large, heavy pumpkins across the room. It was amazing to see the expressions some of them used. Some of them even had pumpkins too big to carry, so they had to drag them by the stem! Very creative! I did this with all of my classes and they all loved it. Here is a picture of my 5th graders.

Happy Halloween!

Apple Tree

The 1st graders are studying apples in their classrooms, so we thought we'd do a few apple songs in music class. Here are the 1st graders singing "Apple Tree".

I put 4 students at a time on the xylophones playing the steady beat while the rest of the class played the game. Once a student had been the tree, they rotated over to the instruments and the last instrument player came back to join the game. This way every student got a chance to play 4 times. The second day we did this, I assessed steady beat on the instruments as they played.

Autumn Leaves

This year I purchased the book "Kids Can Compose" by Nicole LeGrand. There are a ton of great projects in there for all grade levels. To celebrate the first week of fall, I did the Autumn Leaves lesson with my 1st and 2nd graders. At the first grade level, we composed using quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests. At the 2nd grade level, we used the same notes, but we have been talking about tied notes in preparation for learning half note next week. To practice our tied notes, I gave everyone 2 pieces of string that they could use to tie their leaves together. I partnered the kids up and they created rhythms for each other and clapped them. They loved trying to trick each other by creating extra-hard rhythms! Great way to challenge their thinking!

1st Grader clapping her partners rhythm pattern

 Tied rhythms