Santa's Elf Choir

The 5th and 6th grade choir was asked to be the entertainment for the annual Old Fashioned Holiday Supper hosted by our local museum. What an honor! We felt like royalty having a photo shoot for the press release, guest visitors at our rehearsals, and free supper at the event! It was a fun way to kick off the holiday season and show off all of the amazing talent we have in our school.

The Nutcracker Museum

Each year in 2nd grade we study "The Nutcracker". I read them the story and then we listen to the eight pieces in the suite. We follow along with several listening maps and do lots of creative movement activities. We also create a Nutcracker Museum. Any student who has a nutcracker at home can bring it to school to be displayed until Christmas. This year is the most I have ever had!

Christmas Rhythms

The Kindergarteners have been working on their long (soon to be 'ta') and short-short ('ti-ti') rhythms. In groups of two, they composed patterns using trees/hats (longs) and presents/mittens (short-shorts) and then notated the rhythms below. Then they clapped the rhythm. This was their first time actually writing the long and short-short patterns instead of just reading it off of the board.

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!

Every December on their last day of music class before Christmas break, the 6th graders carol around the school entering as many classrooms as they can to spread a little Christmas joy! They spend several class periods preparing a carol to sing or play. In the past I had always had students sing, but this year I gave them the option of performing a Christmas song on a recorder or the barred instruments as well. Every single group did an amazing job!


This year I used the new NAfME Model Cornerstone Assessment for performing to guide their learning( Performing MCA). It was a bit lengthy and got to be a lot of paperwork, but I do think it helped the students grow and become aware of what they were doing. I think it's very important for all of the students to get used to picking and preparing a piece on their own and then performing it in front of an audience. Singing for younger kids is a great place to start. Most of the kids said they were nervous in the first couple of rooms, but by the end they were racing to get to just "one more room" before we finished.

Singing for the librarian.

Singing for the Kindergarteners

The secretarys

The lunchroom

The gym!

The instruments were too big to carry around, so they played for every person that walked through the entry!

2nd graders

Some even wore elf hats!

And if they had been to all of the rooms, they stopped people in the hallways!

Loud and Soft Assessment

The Kindergarteners have been learning about loud and soft. I used plastic plates to do my assessment this year. We listened to several pieces of music and the students held up the plate that they thought best matched the music. We listened to "March" from the Nutcracker, "Radetsky March", and "Bouree" from the Royal Fireworks.


Hint: Taking a picture or a video like these gives you an easy, quick way to assess everyone without having to rely on your memory!

Autumn Winds

The 2nd Graders created this awesome Orff arrangement in music class. All of the instrumentation and movement was created by them (with guidance, of course!).  I used a poem called "Autumn Winds" and we created instrument and movement parts to match the text. The form this class selected was:
A) Poem: Say, Play, and Move
B) Improvised instrument parts using a selected rhythm
A') Poem: Say
B) "                                                                                  "
A")Poem: Solo movement
B) "                                                                                  "
A'") Poem: Play and Move.

And of course we have one leaf that just doesn't want to fall! ;)