I always do centers during the last rotation of the school year. With everything that is going on with end of the year celebrations, performances, etc., it's an easy way to keep the kids focused. One of my new centers this year was Instrument Sort. I only did this center with Kindergarten because it is pretty basic.
What you need:
Assorted basket of small percussion instruments
3 circles for sorting
How to Play:
Sort the instruments by the way they are played.
One at a time pick an instrument, demonstrate and tell your group how it is played (shake, scrape, strike) and place it into a circle.
Repeat with a new person picking an instrument.
This seems to take them about 7 minutes, as long as they follow the directions, which is about the amount of time my students get at each center. If they finish early, they could sort the instruments again but by what they are made out of (metal, wood, skin). You want to make sure to give students a mixture of instruments (known and unknown) so that they can discuss why it is being sorted into a particular circle.
Although I did this at the end of the year, this would be a great activity on a day when you have no voice!
A couple of months ago, my husband came across the app ABC Music by Peapod Labs. He thought it would be great for my classroom, and I think he's right.
I hadn't had a chance to really look at the app until he was playing with our 7 month old niece a couple of weeks ago. She was delighted by all of the instrument sounds and video.
The App is basically an alphabetical list of instruments. When you click an instrument, it opens up a screen with a picture of the instrument and it's name. Along with each instrument are videos of the instruments being played. The app can be played in either English or Spanish; this is great for bilingual programs. It's available in the App Store for $2.99.
I plan to use this app with my Kindergartners this year. We will do a letter each rotation, hitting my benchmarks and supporting their classroom benchmarks as well. This will be a great way to end each lesson.
In Kindergarten we sing solos during every music class and the fuzzy ball is one of my favorite tools for encouraging kids to sing. After we sing our hello song, I sing the Question of the Day. This rotation I am singing "Who is someone that you love?" using SM. After singing the question I say think of one person and give me a thumbs up when you've got it. (This step saves me from hearing a million answers shouted at me.)
I have these in several colors. Oh My Gosh do they get
excited when we use their favorite color fuzzy ball.
Once I see the majority of thumbs up, I randomly (well it's not completely random, I never start with a shy kid) toss the ball to a kid who sings their answer in a sentence. I'm not specific about how the sentence is constructed because this gives the kids a chance to improvise. When they are finished, they toss it back and I go on to the next kid. The whole activity takes about 3-5 minutes. I really love having them all sing a solo each time because I end up with more confident 1st, 2nd, ..... grade students.
I find that holding onto the ball is comforting to some kids. They can squeeze it or stare at it to help give them a bit of extra courage. I do have 2 little friends in Kindergarten that are Selective Mute and 3 in our school this year. Here is a bit of the process I've gone through in working towards singing by themselves.
Our first solo is singing our name. For kids who are shy or are unable to sing their name, the class will sing their name.
Usually our second solo is our favorite color. I would have the child point to the color somewhere in the room. Class sings the solo.
Once we get into favorite animal, candy, etc. They can whisper in a friends ear. The class sings the solo.
Next time, my friends are going to whisper in my ear (fingers crossed). I have noticed it helps if I tell them ahead of time what I would like. It seems to give them some time to process and prepare for the experience. What I have noticed is now they are volunteering to lead in ways that don't use their voice, which is a big step. The key is to be patient and take baby steps.
You may have happened across this absolutely adorable video on Pinterest.
After watching it and thinking how stinking cute those little voices were, I decided I had to try it out with my own Kindergartners. I always include a solo singing opportunity during my K lessons, so this week instead of doing our Question of the Day, we started playing this game.
Before we learned the song, we took a look at the letters on the board and practiced making them with our rhythm sticks. I had already listed the letters that are possible on the board so that we would just have to practice making them. Here are our letters and what they look like with rhythm sticks.
A, F, H
I, K, L
N, T, V
X, Z
If you try this song, you will probably want to preface this activity with a disclaimer about not having all of the parts of the letters but the basic shape. Otherwise, you are going to here "but what about the middle line in the A", "we could use the line on the rug", "but I don't have a line in front of me!" It could be earth shattering to a Kindergartner and, yeah, I didn't think about that one the first time through this lesson. :) If they really can't get past it, they can use their arm to make the other part of the letter.
After we practiced our letters, we moved, with our rhythm sticks in park, and made a circle around the rug. Then I asked them to be my echo. This lesson we only focused on the singing portion, next time we will add the spoken part and discuss the contrasting voices. After echoing a few letters and making them in front of us, we went around the circle and each child got to be the leader.
They loved this!!!
We finished our lesson by creating a soundscape to go along with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. This is a great story to practice playing up/down, high/low sounds.
The other morning I had to suddenly change my plans for Kindergarten because I had forgotten that the class I was going to see that day were my Spotlight Performers (a monthly featured class). I could have taught my planned lesson but it would not have been great for film, so I decided to swap it with the lesson for the next rotation, Jingle Bells.
After settling on doing Jingle Bells with them, I decided why don't we do a dance! Great for steady beat, and same/different. So, I quickly came up with a dance to go with the version of Jingle Bells I had (Frank Sinatra). Using this video as inspiration, I created a little dance for us to do.
Since I was planning on doing this with Kindergarten, I made some changes. We really have not done any dances before, I thought a circle would be a bit much. Can you imagine it? I could see kindergarteners crashing into each other while others called out "No go that way" "Nu-uh that way". :) So, instead we used scattered formation.
The Frank Sinatra recording is a bit different than the one in Dr. Amchin's video, so here is what I did with my little ones.
Formation: Scattered
Introduction - Still for 8 beats
32 beats - sway hips from side to side (This one gives me the giggles. If you try it you'll see what I mean!)
Jingle Bells - same as in the video, play the rhythm of the words, then walk hand in hand with your partner to the beat in any direction, repeat
32 beats - sway hips again
Wave Goodbye
I am sure this is probably not the most fantastic dance out there but the kids enjoyed it, great practice of steady beat and it didn't take long to teach. We were able to learn the dance and do half of the lesson I had originally planned.
If I had more time to work on it, I probably would go ahead and do the circle. I think my K kids could handle it with more time but this was one of those last minute things.
My Kindergarteners loved singing Fall Leaves and working on high/low sounds this week. There is a cute little song in K Game Plan that I used with this activity but any short song about leaves would work.
The idea for this activity also comes from Game Plan but the visual is one I made myself. After singing the melody, I would play a high/low sound on the glockenspiel (the instrument we have been working on playing) and a student would place the leaf on the visual. It took about 7 minutes to give everyone a turn but singing in between helped keep them from getting restless.
I like to pair an activity like this with some movement because little bodies can only take so much sitting. After we did this, we sang another song about leaves and created movement to go along with it.
This is because I find them the most challenging to plan for out of any grade I teach. Every little detail of my lessons have to be thought out; down to how I will explain activities, demonstrate concepts and move from one part of the room to the other. I love my Kindergartners (for 45 minutes at a time) but man do they wipe me out. :)
Anyway, this year I have finally refined my instrument procedures to a point I am very comfortable with and that seems to work well with the kids.
Instrument Positions:
1. Waiting = instrument on the floor, hands in our laps.
2. Resting = instrument on our knees, waiting to play.
3. Playing = holding the instrument with the proper technique.
Resting Position
The first row of kids sitting like "Nicki"(they named the girl on my Good Listener Poster) get their instruments.
Walking Position
(Sorry for the blur, my phone doesn't do so well with a moving target!)
When we are all done, we put our instruments away using walking position. I think it is important for students to learn this responsibility. Instruments are not toys and we need to make sure that we put them away carefully and that they are stored properly so that they do not get lost or broken.
What can possibly elicit a more excited response from a 5 year old than a sparkly microphone? Well okay, maybe any sort of drum but if they aren't getting to play that instrument the magic microphone is the next best thing.
Now I know that you may have a different process but I start my K year off (after rules of course) with a chance to practice our "Four Voices". I don't go very in depth with this process at this point just looking at the four voice posters and then some simple echoing. I also give each child a chance to share one of their four voices using the magic microphone.
I like this portion of my first lesson because it gives each child an opportunity to perform a solo where they have a choice in how they share their voice. I have very little resistance to this activity because my more reserved little ones can choose to use their whisper voice. This is a great way to ease into more solo activities and to reinforce being a good listener.
You may be thinking that I end up hearing all shouting voice, and the first few students did until I got smart. Once we use a sign I turn it around so that the next friend has to choose a different voice. Sometimes I will have two signs turned around. I do this throughout the activity keeping the shouting voice turned as often as possible so that my lesson doesn't turn into a screaming match. At this point, I keep corrections to a minimum and get a feel for where my students are in understanding how to use their different voices.
I loved this idea but I needed more girls represented in my room, so here's my version. The only other thing I changed was "eyes on the conductor". Gotta get vocabulary in as frequently as possible for these little munchkins.
I have taught my welcome lesson three times now and this is so much better than trying to go through my regular rules with the little ones. As they tell me something that they see the girl doing, I add the words to the poster. I love how this worked with them and having the image in front of them was such a great reminder throughout the lesson.
I finally found a solution for seating Kindergartners this year! My classes 1-5 sit on FlipForm risers but these are too much of a distraction for Kindergarten. So this year I posted some shapes under my white board. Each shape is for a row of students. At the beginning of the year I assign each child a row and a place in that row. It takes two rotations before they've got it but it makes the rest of the year a breeze. I can redirect students by recognizing a row that is making good choices, use this as a way to call students to line up and it is even great for taking turns at instruments. Similar to what Artie Almeida does in Mallet Madness, I use my rows to take turns at instruments. After they have taken their turn students go to the end of the row and we rotate until everyone has had a turn.
