This week, my students and I are in “singalong” mode, as we get ready for the holiday singalong on Friday afternoon (see this blog post with more information about putting together a singalong.) I thought I’d share some of my favorite activities and books for my winter holiday lessons. · “Feliz Navidad” book by Jose Feliciano and David Diaz: This is a beautiful picture book narrating the song “Feliz Navidad.” It appears to be out of print, but it can still be bought cheaply on Amazon and www.alibris.com (my favorite out-of-print children’s book website!) I I found it years ago at a book fair,…
This week, my students and I are in “singalong” mode, as we get ready for the holiday singalong on Friday afternoon (see this blog post with more information about putting together a singalong.) I thought I’d share some of my favorite activities and books for my winter holiday lessons. · “Feliz Navidad” book by Jose Feliciano and David Diaz: This is a beautiful picture book narrating the song “Feliz Navidad.” It appears to be out of print, but it can still be bought cheaply on Amazon and www.alibris.com (my favorite out-of-print children’s book website!) I I found it years ago at a book fair,…
This week, my students and I are in “singalong” mode, as we get ready for the holiday singalong on Friday afternoon. I thought I’d share some of my favorite activities and books for my winter holiday lessons. (I realize some of you are lucky enough to already be on break, so if you are, maybe try these next year!) · “Feliz Navidad” book by Jose Feliciano and David Diaz: This is a beautiful picture book narrating the song “Feliz Navidad.” It appears to be out of print, but it can still be bought cheaply on Amazon and www.alibris.com (my favorite out-of-print children’s book website!) I I found…
There are many teachers out there who absolutely love to integrate the seasons and holidays into their lesson plans. I must confess, I’m not exactly one of them. While I love the change of the seasons, and I love the holidays, I don’t usually do that many songs and activities that are dependent upon the time of the year. Part of this has to do with curriculum—depending on whether I had the students the year before (since I teach with another music teacher), I may be teaching ta and ti-ti to my first graders in December one year, and in another year it might be November or January. I don’t wan…
There are many teachers out there who absolutely love to integrate the seasons and holidays into their lesson plans. I must confess, I’m not exactly one of them. While I love the change of the seasons, and I love the holidays, I don’t usually do that many songs and activities that are dependent upon the time of the year. Part of this has to do with curriculum—depending on whether I had the students the year before (since I teach with another music teacher), I may be teaching ta and ti-ti to my first graders in December one year, and in another year it might be November or January. I don’t wan…
I've been busy this holiday season, in between shopping, getting our place ready to sell, and taking care of my girls (Jenna is eight, and Macy is almost four months old.) I'm also about to launch a new blog over at blogspot...I just bought my own domain: www.mrsmiraclesmusicroom.com. It will be up soon. No worries if you're used to my old address though, wordpress should direct you there if you go to aileenmusic.wordpress.com. (Note: if you are following me at wordpress and start to not get notifications of my new blog posts, will you please let me know? I'm not sure how all …
Throughout my career, I've been on the board of several different music education organizations. Each board meeting is a great chance to see old friends, and help guide the future of the organization. At each board meeting, we receive an agenda of the items we will be discussing. During the meeting, I find myself looking occasionally at the agenda—seeing where we’ve been and what we still have left to discuss. Having this list calms me a bit; like many people, I enjoy knowing the direction of the meeting. I bring this up as a comparison to the students in our classrooms. For years, I have …
Throughout my career, I've been on the board of several different music education organizations. Each board meeting is a great chance to see old friends, and help guide the future of the organization. At each board meeting, we receive an agenda of the items we will be discussing. During the meeting, I find myself looking occasionally at the agenda—seeing where we’ve been and what we still have left to discuss. Having this list calms me a bit; like many people, I enjoy knowing the direction of the meeting. I bring this up as a comparison to the students in our classrooms. For years, I have …
Recently I had a colleague ask me how I practiced the musical alphabet and the treble clef with my students. I typed up some activities for her and thought I'd go ahead and post it to my blog. First, here are some activities for helping students to get more comfortable with the musical alphabet (a special thank you to Joan Litman for many of these ideas!) Up and down the alphabet: Have the notes of the musical alphabet written on the board vertically. Start with A, end with G, and then write A again. The teacher points to the letters going up and down and the students say those letters (i.e…
I'm always looking for ways to include vocal exploration in my lessons--especially with my younger students. Vocal exploration is a great way to help students find their head voices. One of my favorite vocal exploration activities is ghost melodies. For this, you can draw a ghost on the board, and then draw the sound the ghost makes, by drawing a small hill and a big hill, loops, or whatever you'd like. Then you have the students explore their voices by going from low to high for each hill, getting higher as the hills get higher. (If this is confusing, see the pictures below...hopeful…
I'm always looking for ways to include vocal exploration in my lessons--especially with my younger students. Vocal exploration is a great way to help students find their head voices. One of my favorite vocal exploration activities is ghost melodies. For this, you can draw a ghost on the board, and then draw the sound the ghost makes, by drawing a small hill and a big hill, loops, or whatever you'd like. Then you have the students explore their voices by going from low to high for each hill, getting higher as the hills get higher. (If this is confusing, see the pictures below...hopeful…
I love using children’s literature in the music classroom whenever I can. After paging through “Llama Llama Red Pajama” by Anne Dewdney, I noticed that there are two recurring rhythmic patterns in the text: With these repeating patterns, I knew I could use it to prepare or practice “ta” and “ti-ti.” When preparing quarter notes and eighth notes, I use the terms “long” for one sound on a beat and “short-short” for two sounds on a beat. Last week, after presenting “long” and “short-short,” I read the book “Llama Llama Red Pajama.” Then we did the following: Discussed what happened in the story (s…
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