What To Do With Those Egg Shakers

If you are starting a new job in a new classroom and suddenly find yourself with access to a bunch of egg shakers you don't know what to do with, or you have had them for a while and feel like you're not getting as much use out of them as you should, or just want some fun new ways to use them in your lessons, this post is for you! In this post you'll find tips for managing their use with students and teaching proper playing technique, plus tons of lesson ideas to use with every grade from Kindergarten up through 6th grade!

1. Management

I actually think egg shakers are one of the best instruments for practicing instrument procedures and expectations and use them for that purpose at the beginning of the year, because they will so easily make noise if they aren't kept very still. I reinforce the rule that "if you play before I say you'll make the instrument go away" and remind students that it's not my place to judge if it was intentional or accidental, so they have to be that careful not to let the egg shaker move when they are waiting to play! I like showing off my stealthy skills by showing them how I can take an egg shaker and put it in my lap without it making any sound and then tell students to do the same. They take it as a challenge and will move so slowly and carefully trying to keep it from making any sound!

2. Playing Technique

One of the reasons I think egg shakers are actually a pretty popular instrument for all of my students is because I tell them from the very first time they use them in Kindergarten that these are not the same as the "baby toys" they may have seen. Every year when I bring out the egg shakers for the first time I remind students not to "be babies" and demonstrate the difference between wrapping your hand around the whole shaker and shaking it in any direction vs holding it on your palm with your fingers and moving intentionally back and forth, like this:

I find it's really helpful not only to get students of all ages to treat the instrument as a legitimate instrument but also to help them be able to play bigger shakers with proper technique that produces a crisp sound when they get older by making them aware that the back AND the forth both make sounds and should be treated as separate notes.

3. Lesson Ideas

Kindergarten: I don't use egg shakers for things like playing rhythms or steady beat in Kindergarten very often because it is so difficult for them to play accurately, but I do introduce proper playing technique (as described above) by having them try to play along with the steady beat of a track with a moderate tempo. My favorite way to use them with this age group (as well as younger self-contained classes), though, is "I Know A Chicken" by Laurie Berkner. I have them echo the A section with the egg shakers on the floor and then pick it up and play it as described in the B section, as a great way to practice echo songs and also introduce the idea of same and different sections.

1st grade: This is when I do start having students play rhythms and steady beat with egg shakers to really work on getting the proper technique and as a way to increase the level of difficulty while we're reviewing rhythms from Kindergarten. I like using egg shakers to play rhythms along with a track or a play-along video because it's quiet enough that I don't have to turn the track way up for them to hear it while the whole class is playing along.

2nd-4th grade: I introduce half notes in 2nd grade, whole notes in 3rd, and dotted half notes in 4th grade, and egg shakers are one of a few small percussion instruments that they can use to play longer duration notes, which is also really fun because it's actually so much easier than trying to get the crisp, shorter notes on the egg shakers! So egg shakers are a frequent feature for rhythm notation practice in 2nd-4th grade.

5th-6th grade: I don't have many lessons in my oldest grades where the entire class is playing egg shakers (although I do still use them at the beginning of the year to review instrument procedures even with my oldest students!), but they are a common choice for composition projects where I am asking students to evoke a specific image or feeling with their music, or for adding foley/ sound effects to a movie, so they get used a lot in the 5th grade videogame composition project and 6th grade movie music unit.

Self-contained: Every self-contained class is vastly different because every student is different! But I do find egg shakers are a great instrument for self-contained classes of all types because they are universally appealing, easy for students with varying levels of motor skill to play, easy to clean if put in someone's mouth, difficult to damage (and not to expensive to replace if they are), and quiet enough not to bother most students with noise sensitivity. I've also found, because I can get them in so many different colors, that they are a great tool to give students choice and also get students to verbalize by telling me what color they want. I've had multiple experiences with students who are nonverbal and use communication (AAC) devices say their first word in my class when they form the sound to say "pink" or "blue" to request their favorite egg shaker.

I hope this gives you some fresh ideas for using egg shakers in your lessons with all grade levels! If you want to see how all of these strategies and lesson ideas are incorporated into a fully sequenced curriculum, with all the complete lesson plans and materials to teach them, you can find them in the Organized Chaos K-6 Curriculum. I am always surprised at how much my students of all ages love playing the egg shaker, and they are such a versatile and accessible teaching tool! 

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Baseball Themed Elementary Music Lesson Activities

Baseball season is still in full swing (see what I did there?!?) so this is a great time to throw some baseball references into your lesson plans! And bringing sports references into music class is always a great way to engage students who may otherwise not get excited about the material. Here are a few simple ways to keep teaching the important concepts and skills we never have enough time to teach while incorporating a baseball theme into the activities!

To be honest I'm a little embarrassed I haven't written this post before now, considering what a central part of my upbringing baseball was- I am by no means a sports fan or a sporty person but my father played baseball in college and it is the one sport I have watched enough to feel like I know what I'm talking about most of the time. In fact baseball is probably the only sport I have consistently been incorporating into my lessons in some fashion since my first year of teaching. And it is always so fun to see the students' faces light up as they talk about their love of baseball!

1. Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Baseball or not, this is in fact my favorite song for introducing dotted half notes. It has a waltz feel without being waltz-y at all and has tons of dotted half notes students can identify as they are first introduced to the new note. I have them sway with the downbeat as they sing, then do a basic 3-beat clapping pattern with a partner, to get them feeling the triple meter, and then have them discover the 3-beat durations to introduce dotted half notes. You can find all the details about the lessons I do with this song in this post- if you pick one baseball activity to do, this is my top pick!

2. Play-Alongs

These days it feels like there's a play-along for everything! I honestly try to limit how often I use them but for sub plans, game days, or just to break up a difficult lesson they are great to have on hand. This video is a boomwhacker play-along for "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (good to note it requires an F#) that would be great for older students, this video is a rhythm play along with just quarter notes and paired eighth notes that's slow enough for beginning readers, and this one is a steady beat body percussion play along that would be great for preschool or self-contained classes.

3. Baseball Review Game

Any time I'm reviewing something with students that can be a little mundane, whether it's note names or music vocabulary, instrument families, or any other information I want students to memorize, I try to turn it into a different kind of "game" to keep it interesting. One of my favorite formats for this is a baseball game: split the class into 2 teams, and each team takes turns "going up to bat" to answer a question/ name a note/ etc. A correct answer gets them 1 base, and the next person on the same team answers another question to try to get another base. If they get a question wrong the other team goes up to bat, and if they get 4 questions in a row correct they get a homeroom before the other team gets their turn at bat. It makes it feel more like baseball, especially with older students, if you have a student from the opposite team be the "pitcher" and read the question from a card (I often use the truth cards from my truth or dare deck for this). Put a picture of a baseball field on the board and use something to track each team's progress around the bases!

4. Baseball Organ Playing

For older students (5th grade and up), introducing students to baseball stadium organ players is a great jumping off point for a lot of topics and topics. I've used it as an example when we're talking about keyboard instruments, a surprising example of a music-related career, and as inspiration for composition projects to get students to think about how to use music to evoke different feelings. This video is a great example of how music can "move a crowd" that you can use to have students create a song that will get a crowd excited, but you can do similar projects to have students compose a "walk up song" for a player, a happy song for when your team gets a homerun, a sad song for when the opposite team scores, etc: 

I hope this gives you some ideas for incorporating baseball into your lessons! If you're looking for more ways to include sports references, here is my post on football themed lesson activities. I think the more we can find ways not just to reference student interests but also help connect things that people often treat as separate, or even opposing, worlds from music, the more we can help all students see themselves as musicians and feel connected to what they're learning in music class. 

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What To Do With Those Djembes

If you are starting a new job in a new classroom and suddenly find yourself with access to a set of djembes you don't know what to do with, or you have had the instruments for a while and feel like you're not getting as much use out of them as you should, this post is for you! In this post you'll find tips for storage, procedures for managing their use with students, and tons of lesson ideas to use with every grade from Kindergarten up through 6th grade!

First a quick note: in this post I'm going to be talking about these Toca Freestyle Colorsound Djembes, which I have in my classroom and have seen many other elementary music teachers using. Some tips and ideas are specific to those instruments but for the most part, apply to any similar djembes you may have in your classroom.

1. Storage

My general rule of thumb with instruments is to store them where students can easily get them and put them back themselves, and for djembes like this, some type of open shelving I think works best. Unlike some other types of drums, they don't stack on top of each other very well (believe me, I've tried), so they can end up taking up a lot of real estate! One small thing I discovered last year that allowed me to fit a lot more drums on the same shelf was to alternate between right side up and upside down so they don't take up as much room- this was a game changer for me!

2. Management

The main problem you're likely to encounter from a management perspective with djembes is students wanting to drum on them when they aren't supposed to. Obviously I have the same rule for the djembes as I do for every other instrument in my classroom: If you play before I say, you'll make the instrument go away. But beyond that I find with drums, students don't realize that touching the drumhead at all can cause the instrument to sound. I always remind students not to touch the white part when they are carrying them or waiting for their turn. Pointing out the color is much more concrete and specific and helps avoid a lot of problems!

One of the reasons I love these Toca Freestyle Colorsound Djembes specifically is because they come in sets of 7 colors, and 6 of those colors are the exact colors I use to break each class into rows/ teams (read about my color teams here- I use them for everything). I love being able to tell students to use the drum that matches their color team, but even if you don't use color "teams" in your classroom, I highly recommend assigning students to a color with some type of system to avoid arguments over which color they get. 

3. Lesson Ideas

This is definitely not an exhaustive list of lessons I love to teach using djembes, but here are some of my favorite ways to use them in each grade:

Kindergarten: It wasn't until recently that I started using the djembes with Kindergarten because they usually sit in the floor and I found it was difficult for them to play while sitting on the floor without knocking the drum over. But a few years ago I figured out that if they sit "criss-cross" with the drum sitting on the floor between their legs, it works really well and of course the students think they are super cool to play! I mostly use them for playing steady beat with a track since they can be quite loud (even when they are resting on the floor)!

1st grade: Even though my 1st graders sit in chairs most of the time, I find most of them are too small to hold the djembe properly between their knees with their feet on the floor. I usually have 1st graders use the djembes to work on rhythm compositions in small groups. I give them a small dry erase board and a marker or use these DIY rhythm cards to write a 4-beat rhythm, then they practice playing it on the djembe and eventually perform for the group. The djembes are easy to manage while sitting in a circle on the floor so they work well for this activity.

2nd grade: I usually teach students how to properly hold djembes in 2nd grade but sitting up in their chairs, putting their feet on the floor, and holding the drum between their knees with the top of the drumhead level with the top of their legs. I use them most often for rhythm play-along videos because they are loud enough to hear over the track.

3rd grade: I like to show my 3rd graders how to "roll" on the djembes to play long notes, especially the whole notes they learn for the first time in 3rd grade. 

4th-6th grade: The smaller djembes I have start to get a little small for some students' hands in the upper elementary grades so I will often use tubanos instead of djembes with this age group, but for a quick rhythm reading or composition activity the djembes are much easier to pull out and put away quickly. I also used the djembes to supplement instruments for drum circle activities when I didn't have very many larger tubanos to use, and then I would just have students put down their instruments in front of their chairs and rotate every few minutes so they could take turns playing the different types of drums. You can read about my favorite drum circle activities in this post.

I hope this gives you some ideas to start using your djembes more in your lessons! If you want the fully detailed lesson plans and materials for everything I do with djembes and more, you can find them in my curriculum. They are such a great instrument to have for rhythm, composition, steady beat, and more and my students always think they are way cooler than hand drums!

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What To Do With Those Boomwhackers

If you are starting a new job in a new classroom and suddenly find yourself with access to a bunch of boomwhackers you don't know what to do with, or you have had the instruments for a while and feel like you're not getting as much use out of them as you should, this post is for you! In this post you'll find tips for storing boomwhackers, procedures for managing their use with students, and tons of lesson ideas and center activities to use with a broad range of grade levels!

1. Storage

I've written an entire post with all the details on how I do this, which I'll link below, but I highly recommend keeping your boomwhackers stored in a way that students can easily access, but also allows students to use the different sizes and colors as a visual aid for understanding and discriminating high and low pitch and reinforcing specific solfege and letter note names. Besides being less fragile and easy for young students to play and hold, the main advantage of these instruments is the way they are color coded and have both the solfege and letter names written on them, so I think it's important to use them to your advantage! Here is the post with all the details on how I store mine:

2. Management

These instruments can very quickly turn into light sabers, missile launchers, walking sticks, etc, and sometimes I lean into that! But most of the time I do want to maintain a little more semblance of order. I always remind students of the same rule I have for every instrument before they get their hands on them: "if you play before I say you'll make the instrument go away". I point out that if they mindlessly tap it on their leg or swing it around it will very likely play and then go away. I have students carry it to their seats and hold it while waiting with two hands. When they are playing, I usually give them the option to either tap it on their other hand, tap it on the floor, or (especially if they are sitting in chairs) tap it on their knee. Otherwise you will very quickly find students bopping themselves on the head!

3. Lesson and Center Ideas

I've written an entire post on my favorite lesson and center activity ideas using boomwhackers, which I'll link below. I truly use these with every age and, contrary to what I expected when I first started teaching, I actually find I use them more with the older grades than the younger ones! They are also great for center activities because I don't have to worry too much about monitoring students using them independently, and we can use them to do a lot of activities with pitch in a simple way that's easy for them to do on their own. Here are all my favorite lesson and center activity ideas:

I hope this gives you some ideas to start using your boomwhackers more in your lessons! If you want the fully detailed lesson plans and materials for everything I do with boomwhackers and more, you can find them in my curriculum. They are really an amazingly versatile instrument for teaching such a wide range of skills and concepts and they are so much fun for all ages!

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