Theme song please ?

As we talk about music this week , I am challenged to think outside the box.  While gathering my resources to teach this theme I found a lot of teacher directed craft type activities but not a lot of purpose driven ideas that are used to reach goals that we are working toward.   Yesterday Randy did Guitar 101 with the kids and we made guitars so today we talked about piano’s.

Talking about piano’s bring back great memories for me.  I took piano lessons starting in the 5th grade from Mrs. Wetzel.  I dont particularly remember her being a ” crack the knuckles ” type of teacher but I do remember her being strict.  Keeping up with my lessons meant I needed to practice.  ( What I find the most interesting that would be so different today than so many years ago was that after school I walked to Mrs Wetzels house to piano lessons from school.  Wow.. have times have changed. It is unsafe and unwise now days to let our children get that far from us or home without supervision. )  I also told them the story that I have heard Randy tell about his piano lessons.  He took lessons and didnt have a piano at his house so he made a piano out of paper.  So .. guess what we did.  We talked about patterns ( white black white black of the keys ) and made paper pianos.  After they were made we listened to some beautiful piano music and ” played our own keyboards.”

Randy uploaded a new APP on the IPAD for the kids to use tomorrow. They are excited !

We also made ribbon dancers.  Ribbon dancers are good for teaching rhythm and spacial concepts ( Is it fast or slow ? How far can I twirl my ribbon without bonking my neighbor in the head ?)  It also just allows a freedom of movement and expression.

And we played.  Because you know really…we learn more while we are ” just playing ” than anything I could plan.