Favorite Halloween Week Lessons

It's the week of Halloween and you know what that means.... kids are HYPED beforehand, and exhausted after. It's also the time of year when music teachers, at least in the U.S., seem to want to go all-in with the holiday-themed lessons. I do not do directly Halloween-themed lessons, but I do try to plan for the general high energy and distraction....

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Tideo: socially distant movement lesson

I, along with many other music teachers I'm sure, use the song "Tideo" as a way to introduce barred sixteenth notes. For the last few years I've done a folk dance with the song to get students experiencing the rhythm, but with covid protocols still in place I needed a movement activity that students can do independently. Here's what we did!I actually...

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Ambos a Dos: Puerto Rican game song

It may be the very end of Hispanic Heritage Month but I just recently came across this song and it's a great lesson to use any time of year! The Puerto Rican game reminds me a lot of some games I grew up playing in Japan, and it was a great song to use with my Kindergartners because it reinforced some concepts they were working on and it is easy to...

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Socially Distanced Elementary Choir

After 18 months of no in-person chorus, this school year I have my choirs back! And while that's super exciting, it also presents many challenges- in my district, we are currently required to maintain 6 feet distance between singers with masks on. I had so many concerns about how this would work going into it, but now that we are a few weeks into the...

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