My Favorite Kindergarten Welcome Song

There's no better way to start early childhood music class than with a song! I've tried a few different ones over the years with varying success, but today I want to share my favorite one that I've stuck with for the last several years- it still hasn't gotten old for me all these years later!I have been using the same welcome song to start my Kindergarten...

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Teacher Hack: make a perfect floor circle

I've been asked more times than I can count how I lay out my carpet spots on the floor to make a perfect circle- I know many teachers do this so today I thought I'd share my quick and easy way to make a perfect circle on the floor every time!All you need is a piece of string and a piece of tape. Figure out where you want the center of your circle to...

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Choosing Classroom Decor

It can be hard, especially when you're starting your first year of teaching or moving into a new position, to figure out where to start with decorating your classroom. It's impossible to get a classroom from "bare bones" to "ready for instagram" in one swoop! We want our classrooms to be inviting, and for the visuals to be meaningful learning tools....

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Empowering Students to Feel Successful in Elementary Music

I've been writing over the last few weeks about the core need I see students having for a greater sense of agency, and how we can foster agency for our students in the elementary music room. In my previous article I shared my top ways to foster student ownership in elementary music. Giving students a sense of agency is obviously a complex, multifaceted...

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Bathroom Makeover

Our downstairs powder room was super boring and inconvenient- completely covered in flat white paint, with nothing but a toilet, sink, and chipped mirror- nowhere to put anything, not even a toilet paper holder. I'm so happy with the changes we made with very little time and money- it is certainly overflowing with personality and has so much more storage...

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3 Ways to Foster Student Ownership

There is a lot that's broken in education right now, and I have been reflecting all summer- actually, since the spring- on what it is that we need most to start to move forward. The word I keep coming back to is agency, and I really believe that, as we come out of the pandemic, agency is what both students and teachers need. But what does that really...

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