Inspired by Pinterest

I don't think I have to tell anyone that Pinterest is a great resource for teachers. Whether you're looking for ideas for your classroom, your home or just for yourself, it's the best and most convenient window shopping there is. When I need ideas for my teaching, I often find myself searching general education boards, not music boards. I find so many great ideas from primary teachers that are easily translatable to music.

This inspiring pin comes from a math board and uses rolling dice to show students how they will answer their math problems for the day. (Thank you to Beyond Traditional Math!)

Instead of math though, we'll be using it for practicing the five voices: talking, singing, whispering, calling and thinking. The sixth roll of the dice gets to be student choice. So I made up this quick printable in legal size:

There's so many ways to use this in practice.....I love combining this type of activity with a game that has multiple rounds. You know how Lucy Locket seems to go on and on and on and on? Roll the die in between rounds and now you're practicing several skills at once and the kids are still getting their play time. Put the kids into small groups after they've mastered a nursery rhyme and let them practice with each other. Put two dice together, two kids/groups together and see if the groups can maintain two different voices at the same time. Use it as an assessment......

Anything else? Leave me a comment!

Go to my TpT store to download it for free. :)

Some updates

This entire website is fairly new but I've been hard at work making changes! (And will probably make a million more!)

I'm excited that I was able to make my own clickable header thanks to Jennifer of The Yellow Brick Road! Her beautiful blog is full of great music information as well as useful blog tutorials. I have also gotten lots of great feedback from some new friends on a Facebook group that I just joined. I'm still working on some general resolution issues (the background looks especially fuzzy to me and I'm feeling as if I should change my social media buttons to the official ones) but it's a work in progress. Just like life, I suppose.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to give input and opinions on my little beginner blog and business!


Keeping the Beat

The steady beat is a fundamental skill that musicians need and can be practiced in a million and one ways. Pat your legs, tap your head, walk around, use an instrument, pass a ball.....those are just a few! Many years ago, before getting a fancy projector, I printed out beat sheets for each student in my class. The fun part they liked was that each paper had different hearts. Something as simple as getting a different sheet each time made it interesting to the kids every time we pulled out the beat sheets! I wish I had some pictures of this, but I don't.....here's what some of them look like from my TpT file though:


You can have the students point and touch the hearts while singing which is great for hands-on, tracking left-to-right practice as well pre-reading practice skills.

When projectors were installed and technology was encouraged, the hearts got animated. When you tap the space bar to the steady beat, the hearts appear automatically to show that you've kept the beat. If they go too fast or slow, just press the back arrow and try again.

To get 20 slides of hearts for printing or using as interactive animated beats, follow this link to my TpT store!

Keeping the Beat

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