Treasure is a fun musical game that builds musical confidence, by encouraging solo singing and getting even the shyest child to join in.
Coming up with engaging games for a middle school classroom can be daunting. They are at an age where they want to be independent, yet need some hand holding. They start the “I’m too cool for school” attitude and it can be intimidating at times when you introduce a new game or project - immediately the eye rolling takes over and you are stuck with questioning yourself. I’m here to tell you, I’VE BEEN THERE! It is incredibly frustrating when you are put in a situation like that, but I’m here to s
Great to use as a fun back-to-school icebreaker among classmates, this Music Camp Mad Lib works well in pairs or groups!
We just completed Day 2 of Music Olympics Camp so I thought I would just sneak in a few pictures and give you some game ideas. Maybe they will help you with a group class idea for your "kick-off" this fall. The premises of the camp is to drill them in note identification, rhythm, musical terms and recognizing simple melodic and harmonic intervals. We've been working on those areas using different games/events. On Friday we have the actual Olympic Games where their parents come and watch. I have two teams of 3 kids for a total of 6 kids this week - one girl and 5 boys so you can imagine the activity level! On the first day, each team made a team flag and came up with their own team "national anthem" (After all, we have to have a song to sing if they make it to the podium during the medal ceremony!). Then we were on to the games... The first one I named Rhythm Toss. I took a piece of plywood and cut it in half (ok, so my husband did the cutting...) and then put 5 holes about 8" round in each one. A bit of paint and some notes/rests and the boards were ready to go. My husband also rigged a way for them to stand up. I wanted to use these boards with bean bags and have the kids "build" measures depending upon which hole they were able to get their bean bag in. The goal was to be the first team to build at least 4 measures. The catch was that they couldn't have any beats/rests left over. If they did, they had to build another measure! They absolutely loved this game! They would get so excited when a team member would get just the note they needed. It also helped to reinforce the number of beats each note/rest has. Because the next event was to drill them in musical terms, I added a twist to this game by having them identify a term before they were allowed to throw a bean bag. This helped when we got to this game... Terminology Concentration! This is a jumbo memory game, but instead of finding two similar terms, they had to match up the term with it's own definition. There are 20 terms and 20 definitions so I put them together in rows 8x5. Each person had the chance to turn over two cards to try a get a match, but their team could help. (If anyone is interested in a pdf of all the cards and definitions, let me know and I'll post them on my website.) The last game I'll show you today uses the magnetic staff board I've posted about...Staff Word Challenge! I put together cards with words using the musical alphabet and each team had to race down and place a note on the staff before running to tag the next team member who would add the second note or "letter" to eventually build the entire word. We did this on the first day and I actually found that the kids had a bit of confusion building the word from left to right. Several times the kids would just put the note on the staff above another note rather than to the right of it. I decided to turn the problem into a discussion about harmonic versus melodic. It solved the problem and also helped set us up for our Interval event which was next!
ONE. MORE. TIME.
Today I'm giving a glance into my first day of school lesson plans, from TK - 5th grade. In the first day of music class, students are arguably the most attentive they will be all year. This puts a unique pressure on the first day's lesson plan to set the tone for the rest of our time together.
Check out this fun free Composers Word Search, free for use at home or in school This is a printable Composers Word Search pdf file,...
The Yellow Brick Road Blog is a website dedicated to providing music teachers with fun education resources for serious music literacy.
Theater Camp is a hilarious film by first time directors Molly Gordon (Booksmart), and Nick Lieberman. This was a collaborative effort between friends as it’s written by Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Ni…
ONE. MORE. TIME.
The Other Day I Met a Bear
* This series of posts is authored by Orff Master Teacher, Linda Ahlstedt. See the foot of each post for her bio and contact information. ...
I'm just a couple of days away from finally finishing my very first piano summer camp pdf! As a FREE PREVIEW of my camp, I'm offering the DIY Boomwhacker instructions at the bottom of this post.
Camp Counselors Alex and Robert combine their years of festival experience to create the most comprehensive packing guide ever to help you prepare for Summer Camp.
