Christmas Carol Bingo Game

A standard December favorite of both me and my students each year is my “Christmas Carol Bingo Game.” Hopefully this game will also become a favorite in your classroom!  Click the link to get the  PDF download of my original Christmas Carol Bingo Game.  This game is my music-spin on traditional Bingo; players have to listen to and identify Christmas carol melodies on a pitched instrument (piano, xylophone, etc.) and then mark their cards accordingly. The challenge is the “caller” will say a column (C, A, R, O, or L) and then just play the melody (no words included) – this challenge reinforces listening skills and melody recognition. 

The PDF includes:

  • Index
  • Directions for Playing the Game
  • Materials Used
  • 15 Original, Unique Bingo Cards
  • “Caller” cards to keep track of what Carols have been called
  • Sheet Music to the 9 Christmas Carols used in the Game


NOTE: This game would be an excellent outside of the music classroom…think class Christmas party, Sunday School classes or parties, Christmas get-togethers, even office parties! In my experience, even adults have gotten a kick out of this game! Enjoy!

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Bulletin Board | 12 Days of Christmas

I am not huge on bulletin boards…I’ll be honest, I really dislike making them.  So I am always thinking of ways to do something once and then use again (at least for a couple years, before I get tired of it!).

This holiday bulletin board is sure to have your students singing all around the school!  My own version of the 12 Days of Christmas, in original clipart format, is fun, whimsical, and “think”-provoking 🙂

Click the image to download the PDF (I have charged a small fee for the hours of work I have put into creating this…thanks for your support!).  Simply print the PDF file in color, cut out all the shapes, glue to a green piece of butcher paper or posterboard, LAMINATE! (so you don’t have to do this all again), and staple to plain, red bulletin board. Instant fun and cuteness!  
I have not gotten mine laminated yet…our laminator isn’t working today.  But I wanted to go ahead and share this file and idea with you before December is over! I will post finished pics when my bulletin board is finally up!  But use your imagination….use these images as you see fit!
NOTE: All images are my own creations (don’t you love vector art!) so there are no issues with copyright.  However, please only use this for personal or classroom use.  Please do not copy or redistribute without permission!  Thanks!
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December Music Education Blog Carnival

In case you do not follow blog carnivals, they are a great way to find new ideas and new blogs to follow. It is also a great way to share your information with others!  I saw today that my “10 Days of Thanksgiving” Post was featured in the December Edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival, hosted by David Ahrens at Sound Education!  Make sure to visit the blog carnival and find some good articles, posts, and ideas.  I love the web-sharing us music teachers are so good at!  

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Sleigh Ride | Holiday Listening Activity

Each week the older classes have a “Listen and Think” to start their lesson.  This week’s “Listen and Think” is Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride.  I post this flipchart page on the board as students enter class….

and we read the questions aloud.  Then I play the following YouTube.com video of John Williams conducting The Boston Pops “Sleigh Ride.” 

Volunteers discuss their opinions of what instruments they heard and what the music reminded them of.  (Typical answers I receive:  temple blocks for the horse hooves, trumpet for the horse whinny, slap stick for the whip; winter, Christmas, snow, the Nutcracker (?? – don’t understand this one but I always get this response – LOL!)).

Then I display the next slide…

And we “popcorn read” the bulleted points, as I expound upon Mr. Anderson’s life.  A great resource is Leroy Anderson’s official website, so I add extra little bits of info, like what exactly is the Boston Pops or where is Harvand.  Then its time for the next slide…

…and we talk about how Mr. Anderson conceptualized and composed Sleigh Ride.  Much to my surprise, I was impressed to learn that the lyrics to Sleigh Ride  were written post-composition, 2 years later!  As we played this in band every year, I always thought, “It sure is cool Mr. Anderson wrote this great piece to the tune of Sleigh Ride.”  Maybe that was my youth and inexperience, but I was fascinated to find out the lyrics were added later!!!  The wikipedia article for Sleigh Ride is a great resource for this…check it out.
We conclude our “Listen and Think” by singing the lyrics with the following Amy Grant recording.  I picked this one because of the good display of the lyrics (like karaoke) but I do apologize for the 5 second ad at the beginning.  I guess that’s what you get for using free things!

I hope you will enjoy this mini-lesson!  What kinds of listening activities and lessons do you use in your classroom?  Leave a comment and please share!

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How to Join PDF files for FREE!!

Many of my resources are shared as PDFs.  As most people know, a PDF is the best way to save a document so your formatting, style, and information is conveyed as you originally created it.  Often I create separate PDFs and then need to combine them into one single file for publishing or sharing.  I wanted to share an online, free site that can easily join PDFs – www.joinpdf.com.  I love that you can upload multiple files, join them into one PDF, and download it right back to your computer, within a matter of seconds – and it’s FREE!!!   You can make donations to support their site, in their words, “if  the site helped you save (or earn) money!”  This site definitely does that!

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Change Is In the Air!

As you may have noticed, there are lots of changes coming down the pipe here at Learn Me Music!  I ask you to be patient as these upgrades take place.  I think you will find the updates beneficial.  More resources will be added regularly and those resources will be accessed easier through the pages above as well as through the tags in the sidebar.  Some things you can do to ensure you don’t miss out on these changes….
  1. Subscribe to my feed via email, using the form in the sidebar
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Thanksgiving Song: Ten Days of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Song – Ten Days of Thanksgiving Day 1

Looking for a Thanksgiving song to use for fun in your classes?  Look no further than one of my go-to blogs and websites, ListenLearnMusic.com.  Rachel Rambach, a music therapist, produces a huge range of original music for all settings, themes, and holidays to use in her therapy.  Her website is amazing, as it allows you to listen to many of her songs and see the lyrics right from her site.  She also gives you the option to purchase her songs for download, through SongsForTeaching.com.  I discovered her Thanksgiving songs album about 2 years ago – it has 4 fun Thanksgiving songs to use in a variety of ways in the music education classroom, in music therapy sessions, or even at home for fun with the family – for only $4!!! I highly recommend you browse her website!!  You will get lost for hours!

One standard in my classroom is the Ten Days of Thanksgiving.  It is a hilarious, fun spoof on the “Twelve Days of Christmas” and my students every year get a kick out of all the lyrics and we all end up hungry by the end!!  I am sure you will too!

I have created a PowerPoint available for download as a visual with this song.  I use it to both introduce the song and to help students remember what food is next.  The pictures with the words really help the visual learners in your class.

Click on the link below to download your copy of this PowerPoint.  You can use it while singing unaccompanied, while accompanying on piano or guitar, or even download Rachel’s version for a small fee and embed into the PowerPoint!  The possibilities are limitless!

How did you use this song in your classroom?  What other Thanksgiving songs do you use?  Please share!!!  Leave a comment below!  
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Halloween Song for Recorder: Minor Tonality and Composing Original Lyrics

Simple Halloween Song for Soprano Recorder – in Em

Not sure if anyone else has discovered this, but there exist very few Halloween-themed or even minor tonality songs for soprano recorder.  In my quest to find a simple Halloween  song for soprano recorder, I ended up writing my own simple melody.  As you can see to the left, it is reaaaalllly simple!!  But for my Fourth Graders, this is the perfect get-back-into-recorder song, as it uses the first four pitches we learn….AND, they fit into a minor key!!!  Yay!!!
In my writing process, I started to write some lyrics to go with my silly little song, but why do all the work?!?  As I am always telling myself, my students need to go home more tired than I am.  So I made them do the hard work.  Each class wrote their own simple lyrics with a spooky, Halloween theme.  I added a rough piano accompaniment just using Em and Am broken chords.  Our final form followed this pattern:

FORM
Piano Introduction
Play Song on Recorder 1x
Sing Lyrics 1x
Play Song on Recorder1x
Piano Coda
The best part of these kinds of lessons in my classroom is RECORDING!!  After we rehearse the final form 2 or 3 times, I use Audacity or GarageBand to record our performances.  Often I just use the (gasp!) built-in mic on my MacBookPro.  I usually am so rushed with 50-minute periods and don’t have time to bother with an external mic.  But, by all means, if I had time and if you do, I know the recording quality would improve tremendously.  My students are all familiar with my website on my school’s website and know how to find the recording page to share music class activities with parents and families at home.  Go to the “Class Recordings” page and you can hear the different classes recordings as well as see the JPG file of their composition.

Here’s a sample of one of our recordings:  
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Pitch Lesson with Boomwhackers®: Five Little Pumpkins


October is by far my favorite month of the year!  And Halloween ranks up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving as my favorite holidays!  
In my Kindergarten and First Grade classes this week, we are using the song/fingerplay/story “Five Little Pumpkins” to learn about pitch.  I use the version made famous by Raffi.  Visit this site if you are not familiar with his version – complete with cute, fun animation!

My version of the fingerplay, with lyrics, and solfege is as follows: 

Five little pumpkins (hold up five fingers) [d’ d’ d’ ti ti]
Sitting on a gate (“sit” five fingers on your other forearm) [la la la la sol]
The first one said “Oh, my it’s getting late” (tap wrist with one finger, like its a wrist-watch) [sol fa fa mi mi re re re re do]
The second one said, “There are witches in the air” (point in the air) [do re re re re re mi fa mi re]
The third one said, “But we don’t care” (swat one hand down, as if you “don’t care”) [re mi mi mi mi mi fa sol fa mi]
The fourth one said, “Let’s run, and run, and run” (pretend to jog) [mi fa fa fa fa fa sol la sol fa]
The fifth one said, “I’m ready for some fun!” (swing one bent arm, like a “jolly fellow”) [fa sol sol sol sol sol sol sol la ti do’]
“Oooooooo,” went the wind (wave one arm over head) [sol do’ do’ do’ ti]
And out went the light (clap on “out”) [ti la la la sol]
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight (roll arms like “This Old Man”) [sol sol fa fa fa mi mi re re re do]

Once we learn the fingerplay and can sing the song, we discuss the pitch of the song.  I use step bells and Boomwhackers® to demonstrate how the melodic direction/pitch goes down, up, and down again.  This is a continued discussion about pitch with my Kindergarteners and First Graders, but you could definitely also use this lesson to introduce the concept of pitch.  
Boomwhackers® are wonderful teaching tools, especially learning about pitch because they’re visual, hands-on, and lots of fun!!  If you don’t have a set or don’t know what they are, visit www.boomwhackers.com and Music K8’s Boomwhacker® central.  
Here are some examples of my Boomwhacker® notation pages for “Five Little Pumpkins:”  

You can go to my TeachersPayTeachers page to download the complete lesson file in either Flipchart format for ActivInspire/ActivStudio users (for Promethean Boards) or PowerPoint format.

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Free Lesson Ideas Using BrainPop and BrainPopJr

Need a new idea for great music lessons?  My go-to lesson “fun-maker” is BrainPop Jr and its big brother, BrainPop.  These two sites are subscription based for full-access, but there are a number of free resources, lessons, and movies available for use as well!   My school district has a site-wide subscription of both sites and I use their resources often and with great student response!  Our kids are familiar with the endearing characters: Moby the Robot, Annie, and Tim.  If you do not have a subscription, you can get a Free Trial or you can purchase subscriptions based on your needs, or look into getting your school to buy a subscription (wink, wink!).

Here are two ideas – one with the free resources and one subscription-based:

FREE

Yo-Yo Ma – BrainPop (in the “Free Stuff” section, under “Arts and Music”)
Review the string instruments and especially emphasize the cello.  Listen to a recording of Yo-Yo Ma performing (my favorite recording is Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax “Brahms Cello Sonatas”).  Then watch the BrainPop movie.  Use the “Activity,” “Graphic Organizer,” and/or “Vocabulary” sheets to fuel group discussion.  If you have an interactive whiteboard, I would recommend just completing them as a class on the board rather than making copies and wasting time passing out materials.  If you have short class periods like me, I try to avoid those activities when I can.  [Extension:  Watch a YouTube video of Yo-Yo Ma performing live. Or do a movement activity to one of the Brahms Cello Sonatas, showing the form of the music]

SUBSCRIPTION

Musical Alphabet – BrainPopJr. (in the “Arts and Technology” Section, under “Music”)
Watch movie.  Use the “Talk About It” and “Activity Worksheets” to reinforce skills.  Or download my homemade worksheet that I used with my students here (it incorporates some of the worksheets from BrainPopJr with my own homemade stuff).   [Extension:  Use any of the drill worksheets at SheetMusic1 – they have a huge library of free downloadable stuff, great resource!!)

It is my personal belief that these little movies are so fun, catchy, and entertaining that they can actually “teach” better than me at times – especially when you are a verbose, long-winded teacher and you only have 50 minutes per class period!!!

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