A Peek at My Week 9/22/14

Happy Monday!

    I am once again linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for her Peek at My Week!

Kindergarten is continuing their Farm unit with Cows this week- adding Cowbell to their repertoire of handheld percussion instruments and Tiptoe to their repertoire of movement words.

1st- 2nd graders took a break from Centers last week, but this week we are going back to them and each adding one *new center*:

      1st- coloring, Musical Groceries (sorting foods by sound- ta- 1 or ti-ti-2), sorting forte and piano pictures, and *Handheld Percussion Memory card game*

      2nd- coloring, Lego Rhythms, Rhythm Jenga, and *Musical Groceries (actually writing rhythms)*

Each class will also be doing a reinforcement activity before Centers- 1st graders will learn Hickory Dickory Dock and use Xylophones to show melodic movement going up and down and 2nd graders will do a melodic dictation to reinforce knowledge of Mi, Sol, and La on the musical staff.

3rd graders will start learning the whole Major scale on solfege syllables and learning how to identify them on the musical staff. We will try to ID all of the notes in the Music K-8 song, Light as a Brick and play it on Boomwhackers.

4th graders will play Recorder Baseball and listen to their chorus songs for the Winter concert in January.

5th graders will learn choreography to the song "Get Ready for This!," an activity that I learned about from Clare Eggleston at We Love Music at HSES! It's tons of fun and reinforces ABC form. We will also listen to their chorus songs for the Winter concert in January.

In addition to teaching, I am holding auditions for our new Before School Chorus- All Star Chorus- I had some awesome auditions last week and am looking forward to having some more this week!

Have a great last full week in September!

~Ms. Patrician

Positive Thinking Thursday

Hi everyone!

     Today I am linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for her Positive Thinking Thursday.

My positive thought of the day is focused on our Back to School Night, which was last night for us. The Specials team decided to get together in one room and invite the parents to meet us all at once- and it was SO great!! We each created a sheet of paper that gave some information about the program and were able to greet the parents and talk to them about their kids and our classes. We had an overwhelming turnout and it was the best Back to School Night I've had here!! :)

Link up on Mrs. Laffin's post by clicking the picture above!

Have a happy Thursday!!

~Ms. Patrician

A Peek at My Week

Happy Monday Everyone!!

         This week I am once again linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for A Peek at My Week!

This week I am using Emily F. of The Sweetest Melody's Fall Into Music activities in 3 different grade levels. I bought this bundle off of Teachers Pay Teachers last year, and LOVE IT!! Thank you for this incredible resource!!

1st Grade will be reviewing high/low and up/down using the song Leaves, which goes up and down the scale and then adds Boomwhackers to make it even more fun!!

2nd Grade will be reviewing Sol, Mi, and La and where they go on the music staff by learning and singing The Pumpkin Patch and then using Cherie Herring's Pumpkin Patch Solfege activity.

3rd Grade will be reviewing rhythms and also Do, Re, and Mi using Hop Old Squirrel and hopefully adding movement and instruments!

My 5th graders will finish up their Soundtrack of my Summer project, adding their CD cover, so that it can hang outside my classroom for everyone to see as they walk by. My 4th graders will continue reviewing recorder notes from last year using centers and group work.

Kindergarten will continue their Farm unit from Game Plan, learning about the lamb this week! We will also add "tiptoe" to our action game (we have colored cards that indicate "stop," "walk," and "slow motion" so far), play a listening game using maracas, and sing "Betty Martin."

PreK and Montessori classes are still learning the rules and procedures of the classroom through movement, instrument playing, and, of course, SINGING!!

Have a great week, everyone!

~Ms. Patrician

Positive Thinking Thursday

Hello everyone!

     Today I'm linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for her Positive Thinking Thursday!

Since this date 13 years ago was a very hard day to think positively in this country, I'm thinking back over those years and feeling very grateful for all of the great things in my life. I have a wonderfully supportive family, great friends, a loving boyfriend, and a job that I absolutely LOVE!

Other than that, my positive thought specific to this week would have to be that after only one class with me, my Montessori class yesterday remembered my name AND sang it to me (without me prompting or singing with them) during the Hello song. Since this is an added Montessori class from last year, I didn't know any of them before last Wednesday. Hearing them singing and making music with me (Ms. Patrician), brought a huge smile to my face! :)

Link up with your positive thoughts by clicking on the picture above!

Have a wonderful end of your week!
~Ms. Patrician

Tuesday Book Club Linky Party

Hi everyone!

    I am linking up with Emily at Emily's Kodaly Music for her Tuesday Book Club Linky Party. (Yes, I know it's Wednesday ;).

This week, I am sharing a book from an old blog post of mine, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. Click on the picture below to go to my complete blog post, which talks about my collaboration with the Art Teacher to stretch this book across 1st grade classrooms, as well as the music and art rooms!

I use this book when I begin to talk about Handheld percussion instruments and put them into families (Wood, Metal, and Skin). I use a different instrument for each of the articles of clothing, and the kids love getting to their turn and trying all the instruments. When we get to the "BOO!" part, all the kids yell it and one student gets to play the Gong. It is a TON of fun and a great October book for the music classroom, as well as other classrooms in the school. I highly recommend using it!

Happy Hump Day!

~Ms. Patrician

A Peek at My Week

Happy Monday!!

     That must mean it's time to link up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for A Peek at My Week!

Today is the last day that I will see *new* classes for the year, so tomorrow starts my second lesson of the school year.

This year I am trying to make Centers a big part of the music classroom. Since I have 60 minute classes, I would love to spend half the time doing a whole group activity and the other half doing some centers- adding on as the year goes. As I stated last week, 1st grade will be learning how to use the Musical Groceries Center, and 2nd-3rd will be learning how to use the Lego Rhythm Center. Links and credits are included in my previous post.

The other thing that will be a big part of our week will be our Hoffman Boston All Star School Song!! Last year each class in the school K-5 worked together to write a part of this song, which is now sung at each major event in the school community. Each class will be recording a video of themselves singing the song that will be broadcast in classrooms before our morning news, HBTV. It is so great to see that returning students still know the lyrics and movements!

PreK and Montessori will be working on procedures and learning a little more about our Australian animals, the Platypus and Kookaburra, using books and the chant "Down Under".

Kindergarten will continue their Farm unit, using Game Plan materials, with a visit to the Hen House!!

4th grade will continue working with recorders after writing in their listening notebooks.

5th grade will learn the 5th Grade All County Honors Chorus audition song and then play the following Drum Circle Game:

Have a wonderful 2nd Week of September!!

~Ms. Patrician

A Peek At My Week

Welcome back to school, everyone!!

We just started yesterday and got things rolling slowly, but today PreK starts and it's going to be all sorts of crazy in the hallways! I'm excited to have a full day of music making with my kids!!

Before I get into my classroom tour and all that fun stuff that everyone has been doing for the past two weeks, I thought I'd ease back into blogging this year by linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and her "Peek at my Week" Linky Party!

I teach PreK-5th grade, so my days always include a large range of age, skills, interest, etc. This year, I have been fortunate enough to receive a part-time teacher to help with my class load. Jeanette will be here on Mondays and Fridays to work with some of our classes. I'm excited to be able to work and share ideas with someone else!!

This week, each class is taking a tour of the music room, where they will see everything from my "Rest Area" to my tissue box (because I'm tired of telling students that they can just go get a tissue if they need one!!). Each class is also revisiting our Hoffman Boston School Song, which the students wrote last year with the help of Brian Chevalier, a visiting artist and children's songwriter.

I have my 1st-5th grade classes for 60 minutes each, so I can fit a lot of activities into that one period. Here is my summary of activities for each class:

PreK/Montessori- learn names with the Hello and Goodbye songs, be introduced to new songs and chants that we will be using over the next two months

Kindergarten- I used the Farm Unit from Game Plan last year, which includes a recurring song to introduce the animals, as well as songs and activities to fit the animals each week- this week we will be learning about the Duck!!

1st Grade: We will work on matching words with 1 and 2 sounds to rhythms, as well as learning one of my center activities, Musical Groceries (Thanks to Ashley Queen), to go along with it. We will also be learning Punchinella, a musical movement game from the 1st grade Game Plan book. It comes at the end of 1st grade, but I find that it is a wonderful 1st day activity!

2nd Grade: We will review rhythms from last year using Ashley Queen's Lego Rhythm SmartBoard files. We will also add the half note to our rhythmic vocabulary. This will then translate into one of our Center Activities for the year. We will also review and play Punchinella from 1st grade.

3rd Grade: We will have a Snowball Fight!!...with papers that have some of our favorite songs written on them. Each student will then have the opportunity to guess whose paper they pick up when the fight is over. We will learn the audition song for our new All Star Singers, which will meet before school once a week, as well as do a Listening Challenge (thanks to Jennifer Fink for this worksheet), one of which we will hopefully be completing each week in music class.

4th Grade: We will start using our listening notebooks to reflect on Taylor Swift's new song- "Shake It Off." Then we will use recorders to review last year's musical knowledge. 

5th Grade: We will continue to use our listening notebooks from last year, play some Rhythm Review Football, and write a Soundtrack to Our Lives!!

I hope that everyone else has had a smooth start to the school year, I will post more about my classroom, etc. once I have gotten my balance here in VA!!

~Ms. Patrician