The Nutcracker

In 2nd grade we study The Nutcracker and I encourage kids to bring in any nutcrackers that they have at home to show the class. This year, one student and her grandpa made a homemade nutcracker just for music class! How cool is that?!

Concert Season!!

Here are some pictures from all of the wonderful concerts we have had this December. I'm always so proud of the kids and this year I had 100% attendance at all of my concerts!! Not a single kid missed! All 43 kids at the choir concert, all 46 at the 3rd grade musical, and all 38 at the 4th grade musical...that's 127 kids!! WOW!!!

5th and 6th Grade Choir Concert

Singing "Carol of the Elves" by Janet Gardner

42 kids!! The biggest choir I've ever had!

3rd Grade Musical- "The Grumps of Ring-a-Ding Town"

Hear the merry bells ring!

Being "Grumpy"

We're ornery and crabby!

Mrs. Gault's Class

Mrs. Schepp's Class

4th Grade Musical-"The Grumps of Ring-a-Ding Town"

We all do better when we work together!

Snowmageddon! HELP!!

Mrs. Foster's Class

Mrs. Grochow's Class

They wanted to do a grumpy picture, too!!

Turkey Tunes

Every music teacher knows that Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for us. Musicals, concerts, programs...you name it, we have at least 3 to direct! So of course I am just now getting around to updating my posts. I had a meeting the week of Thanksgiving and wanted a fun activity for the sub to do with the 1st graders that would be easy, so I created these Turkey Tunes (although I know they aren't really tunes, they're just rhythms...but let's not get too technical!). You could add solfege syllables to each rhythm and then perform it on a pitched percussion instrument or boomwhackers, then it really would be a Turkey Tune!


I created turkeys and then several feathers containing tas, ti-tis, and rests for the kids to put on the turkeys. Working with a partner, they created a rhythm pattern and then clapped it. After a while, they got a worksheet and copied down one of the rhythms they created. Then, they got to color their turkeys. It was a simple, easy rhythm lesson and the turkeys looked really cool!!

Busted! and other Bass Clef games

The 5th graders just finished studying the bass clef notes. I posted last year about the centers that I use (Treble and Bass Clef Centers). I replaced the Swat the Staff game with a new game I found on Pinterest called Busted!. The kids really liked this game. Here are the directions:

I also created a memory game using some foam flowers I had left over from my spring program last year.

After we finished Bass clef, we reviewed all of the notes on the grand staff. I used the M&M Note Name Challenge from the Making Music Fun! website. Christmas colored M&Ms were on sale so I bought one bag for each class and it worked out perfectly. We found each of the notes in the treble and bass clef, and then I had them do some spelling words in either treble or bass clef. They were only allowed to eat their M&Ms if they could correctly spell "baggage" in both treble and bass clef. Talk about motivation!