Since it's the week of Halloween, I thought I'd blog about activities and songs I'm doing this week!

I'll be honest, I haven't always done many holiday activities in my music classroom. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and I love dark, spooky music. However, in the past, I've had some classes on one lesson while other classes were four lessons behind because of my schedule (with some classes coming Monday and Friday and some classes coming Tuesday and Thursday, it's easy to not be on the same lesson!) Now with my new block schedule (which I will blog about soon), all my classes are on typically on the same lesson each week, which is great! It also allows me to focus on the time of the year as well as the concept. I can't say that all of my activities for the week are Halloween-related, but here are the Halloween-themed activities, songs, and books we are doing this week!

With first grade, I will read/ sing "There was an old lady who swallowed a bat," a book I picked up at the book fair. So cute! (You can view it by clicking below.)

I will then transition into "There was an old woman all skin and bones," which is an absolute must for this time of the year! You can see the music here at the new Holy Names online folk song collection (which you should visit anyway...it looks great!)

My Kindergarteners and first graders have also had fun with ghost melodies; I wrote a blog post about this activity here.

With second grade, we've been practicing la with my Halloween patterns for sol, mi, and la, which you can see by clicking below:

When you throw a squishy ball at the SMART board or tap the image of your choice from your computer, it brings up a pattern for you to sing, like this:

It's a great way to practice melodic reading!

I've also done some activities by other music sellers, like Totally Tuned In Teacher's Creepy Cauldron for quarter rest and Cowgirl Composition's In the Hall of the Mountain King powerpoint. 

My third graders are practicing lines on the treble clef staff, so I decided to make this game for them (click on the first picture below to see the product):

Students have to read the note behind the door of the haunted house, then identify it, like shown below:

If students answer correctly, they find a trick-or-treater (my third graders had fun looking at the costumes for all of the trick-or-treaters) but beware, if you answer incorrectly, you find a ghost!

My fourth graders know the lines and spaces on the treble clef staff, so they played the lines and spaces version of Haunted House.

My fourth graders are also beginning to prepare ti-tika, so they are learning the Spanish chant "El Reloj," with this slideshow from "Songs and Activities for Autumn" (which is actually for the Day of the Dead.)

Speaking of the Songs and Activities for Autumn set, I'm also using the rhythm charts with my first graders to prepare ta and ti-ti, by having students read left to right, right to left, diagonally, however, as they clap the rhythm and figure out whether each word is a long or short-short! Here is the Halloween chart from the set:

I hope you are able to do some of these activities this week, or that I've at least given you some inspiration to make some activities of your own! Happy Halloween!