MIOSM® Activities 2025

I've been sharing my favorite ways to recognize Music In Our Schools Month® (MIOSM®) for over a decade now, and each year I do things a little differently. In today's post I'm sharing the full list of everything I have planned for MIOSM® 2025 in my school- everything from in-class activities to school-wide March Madness song brackets and more. I can't wait!

Rhythm Battle: Music Class Activity #1 (K-6)

I do several special activities and contests during music class in the month of March to celebrate Music In Our Schools Month, and the one I've been doing with every class, every grade, every year that I've taught (approaching 2 decades!) is the Rhythm Battle! And my students still look forward to it every year. We start class with this each time they come to class. They sit down, I start the music, and I put up a slide on my projector that says "Rhythm Battle!". When the intro is ending, I count off 4 beats and click to the next slide on "four". There is a 4-beat rhythm on that slide. If the class claps it correctly, I click to the next 4-beat rhythm slide on the 4th beat, and they have to continue clapping with no pause. They keep going until they make a mistake. When they mess up, they go back to the first slide and start over. Whatever their longest run is before the song ends, that is their class score for the day. I have a score board for each grade so we keep track throughout the month, and the class with the highest total score at the end of the month wins. If you want to see the slides I use, you can get them here.

Disco Duel: Music Class Activity #2 (K-3)

This is another music class activity I've been doing my entire teaching career! I used to do this one with every grade as well, but a few years ago I came up with a different game that I do with my older students, so now it is reserved for just my K-3 classes (although sometimes my older students ask for it too, and I save it as a reward activity if they finish everything else they need to do and we have some extra time left). Cards with the name of a movement (like "cowboy", "DJ", or "hop"), along with a matching picture, are on the whiteboard in a few columns (I usually do 3-4 columns). Before we try it the first time, I teach them the movements for each- they are all movements that can be done with the beat. The last card is always "boogie", which is free dance- students make up their own. To play the game, students perform each movement for 8 beats, reading from the left column, top to bottom, with the beat of the music that I play. BUT I start each group at a different time (I relate it to a canon for older students), so that when the first group finishes the first column, the second group starts. When all the groups finish, I pick the winning team that did the best job of performing the moves correctly and staying on the beat for the correct number of counts. I've updated the movement cards- you can get them here if you're interested.

Melody Match: Music Class Activity #3 (4-6)

This is the newest addition to my MIOSM music class activities lineup and my older students actually take this very seriously! The basic idea of Melody Match is to see how many note letter names the class can identify in one minute. Depending on the grade it might be just treble clef on the staff, adding ledger lines, or treble and bass clef- this could even be done with solfege. A note comes up on the screen and I call on 1 student to name the note. They get one chance- if they're right the class gets a point and I pull up a new note, if they're wrong I go to the next student and continue until they get it right (or the timer ends). The total number of notes they identify correctly in one minute is their class score for that day, and they try to improve their score each time they have music class during the month of March (you could also do this like the way I run Rhythm Battle, and make it a competition between classes within each grade to see which class can get the highest total score).

School-wide March Madness Song Bracket

I started doing a March Madness- style bracket with songs tied to the national theme for that year's MIOSM a few years ago and it has been a huge hit in my building! I go into detail about how I set everything up and run it in this post, but basically each class votes every day in their homeroom, and the song that gets the most classes' votes goes on to the next round. We play the winning song from the day before in the lobby where all the students enter in the morning and announce it on the morning announcements each day as well. I am super excited about this year's bracket- I am doing songs that are a fusion of 2 or more musical genres (to tie in with this year's theme of "United through Music")! You can find the full list of songs for this year's bracket, plus a free template to set up voting in google slides, in this post.

This year I am also planning to get the staff involved by giving them the list of songs in advance and having them predict which song will be the winner. Whoever guesses the winning song correctly gets a prize! 

What are your plans for Music In Our Schools Month® this year? I really think this is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the importance and joy of music education, and there are so many great ways to do that without making your life miserable with things that are too much work. I'd love to hear other ideas you're trying this year in the comments below, and let me know if you have any questions about the things I'm doing! If you want to see all the other things I've done over the years, here are all my posts on the topic.

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Black Children's Musicians

In honor of Black History Month, in this post I'm compiling some of my favorite children's musicians who are Black. These artists have so much great music that's perfect for the preschool - Kindergarten age group and many of them have amazing educational videos on their channels that are great for the classroom as well!

Divinity Roxx

Aaron Nigel Smith

Miss Jessica

Fyütch

Shine and the Moonbeams

I hope you found a few new artists to use in your early childhood music classes- they all have so much great music and content that are perfect for the littles, and they represent a lot of different genres that are often missing from children's music as well. Have some more favorite Black children's musicians? Leave a comment below so we can all add them to our playlists too! 

If you're looking for other current musicians outside of the children's music genre to share with your students and use in your music lessons, here are several more lists I've compiled in previous years (these lists are not limited to just Black musicians, but many of them are):

  

 

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All of the Snowflakes: winter composition lesson

Today I've got a super fun lesson I've been using for years with 2nd grade to guide students through the task of creating a B section for an existing A section to compose in ABA form. Every year I do this there is tons of laughter, exuberant singing, and aha moments, and it has a snowy theme that is perfect for this time of year!

The song is actually called "If All of the Raindrops", but I've only ever used the 2nd verse that replaces raindrops with snowflakes to use in winter (but hey, you could take this same lesson plan and use it with verse 1 in the springtime or even make it summer-themed with the 3rd verse about sunbeams!). Here's a recording of the song (the 2nd verse starts around 28 seconds in), and here are the lyrics to the 2nd verse that I use:

If all of the snowflakes were chocolate bars and milkshakes

Oh what a snow that would be

I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide

Singing, "ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah ah"

If all of the snowflakes were chocolate bars and milkshakes

Oh what a snow that would be

First of all the song itself is hilarious, especially if you really ham up the "ah ah" part like I do, and it immediately sparks students' imaginations thinking about chocolate bars and milkshakes falling from the sky and into their mouths. As with most songs I teach in K-2, I add motions to the song. Besides adding a kinesthetic element, it replaces conducting as a great way to keep young singers together when we're singing, which is important when you're switching back and forth between the song and the (yet to be created) B section, plus it's an easy way to have students listen to you sing first before jumping in to sing.

First I have them follow my motions while I sing the song, then they echo after me line by line to learn the whole verse. After they hear the song the first time, I make a point to pause and discuss the lyrics and discuss how awesome it would be to have sweet treats fall from the sky.

Once they've learned the song, I pull out the whiteboard and ask students to think about what else- besides chocolate bars and milkshakes- they would be happy to have fall from the sky and catch in their mouths. I write down their responses and make a long list. As we're making the list, I think about the number of beats it will take to say each item ("ice cream" can be 2 eighth notes taking up 1 beat, but "chocolate chip cookies" would be 2 beats), and I cut off the list when we get to 24 beats. Making the list is always the best part- there is always at least one student that comes up with a strange answer that makes everyone laugh!

Once the list is done, I model chanting the whole list and then have students practice chanting it with me on the beat by echoing after me, 4-8 beats at a time. Now that chant becomes the B section for our snowflake song! I use this lesson after students have already learned about ABA form, so they instantly make the connection. This is a quick and easy way to have students go through the process of creating a contrasting section as a whole class, and I follow the lesson up with a task where they compose a B section for another song on their own.

I hope you'll try this lesson out with your students- it is such a great way to introduce the task of composing contrasting sections and review ABA form, and most of all it is so much fun! If you want all the materials for this lesson plan, plus all of the lessons before and after it that scaffold all these different concepts, you can get those in my 2nd grade curriculum set here.

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Football Themed Elementary Music Lesson Activities

The Super Bowl is almost here and that means for many of our students, they have American football on the brain! Here are a few easy ways to tie in the theme of football in those days leading up to, or right after, the Super Bowl (or really any time during football season)!

Rhythm Play-alongs

There are some really fun rhythm play-along videos with a football theme that are a quick and easy way to review whatever note values students are working on. Ready GO Music has several with different rhythm combinations for different grade levels that I love, including everything from dotted quarter/ single eighths which I use with 6th grade, all the way to just quarter notes, which is a great lead-in to rhythm notation reading for Kindergarten this time of year.

Note Identification

I have used these videos from Music Maestra as part of sub plans several times to have my students practice identifying treble clef letter names, bass clef letter names, or just identifying line and space notes. There's even one that mixes treble and bass clef letter names which is a great challenge for my older students!

Halftime Show/ National Anthem/ Lift Every Voice/ America the Beautiful

Obviously there are a lot of ways directions you could go with this but the basic idea is to compare performances from various Super Bowls and have students vote on their favorites, explaining the reasons for their choices with musical elements of the performance. You could also focus on specific musical characteristics, whether it's dynamics, genre, tempo, timbres, or something else, and have students identify that element in each performance of the same song that they hear. 

Music Notation/ Vocabulary Review Game

This is another general idea that can be applied to pretty much anything you want to review. It could be rhythm note values, note letter names, instrument sounds/ names/ families, dynamics/ tempo vocabulary, or whatever else you're working on. All you need is an image of a football field (look it up online and either project it, print it out, or draw a basic on on the board) and some questions/ tasks for each team to complete. Split the class into 2 teams, assign each team to one side of the field, and tell them that they get 5 yards for each correct answer/ completed task. You'll need some way to mark their progress across the field, whether that's writing with dry erase, magnets, or some other object you can move across the "field".

You can make it a little more complicated by having "downs" like in football rules, where if they get a question wrong it goes to the 2nd/3rd/4th down before the other team gets a turn, or just keep it simple and have each team take turns to see if they get 5 yards or not.

Jingles

I haven't done this in a few years but writing a jingle is such a fun composition activity for older students, and one of the main attractions of the Super Bowl for a lot of people is the ads! They choose a product, write a few lines promoting it, and then add a catchy melody. You could tie it into a unit on instruments of the orchestra by having them write jingles about specific instruments, or tie it into a unit on genres by having them advertise a genre, or write their jingles in a specific genre.

Super Bowl Food Rhythm Composition

This is another easy one to use with any age: notate different super bowl foods as rhythms and have students use them to compose, or just practice reading (and maybe playing on instruments) the notated rhythms. Obviously there are tons of options and you can adjust how you say certain words to fit with the rhythms students are working on in different grade levels, but here are a few examples to get you started:

I hope this gives you some fun ideas you can use in your lessons to bring the Super Bowl into your music classroom! Of course there are plenty more ways to incorporate the football theme- I'd love to hear ideas you've tried in the comments!

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Who Has Seen the Wind?

There are some songs I use in my elementary music lessons that can be used for so many different music concepts that I end up using them in multiple lessons with multiple grade levels, and "Who Has Seen the Wind" is one of them! I can't say I use it in every grade every year- I think my older students' eyes would roll higher than the sky if I did that to them- but I have used it in different grades over the years so many different ways and it has honestly been equally effective every time, so today I'm compiling all of the ways I've used this song in one place.

If you aren't familiar with the song, it is based on a poem by Christina Rossetti. I'm not sure who wrote the melody but I found the hauntingly simple song originally from The Yellow Brick Road- listen to her recording here and see some of her other great lesson ideas and resources for the song in her blog post here.

Early Childhood

I have used the song most often with Kindergarten. I add some simple hand motions to the first verse and teach them the song, then have them play along with the steady beat on egg shakers, then use it as a way to introduce xylophone playing by having them play on the steady beat on D and A. To make it even more magical I have some students play other instruments with windy sounding timbres, like ocean drums, wind chimes, rain sticks, ratchets, and finger cymbals, and have students rotate through the parts. 

One new addition to that lesson plan this year was the song, "Blowing In the Wind" by Stephanie Leavell from Music for Kiddos. It goes perfectly with the song and is a great movement activity after having young students sitting still and concentrating on playing instruments and singing at the same time! 

2nd Grade

I introduce half notes in 2nd grade and this song is an easy one to teach quickly and have students aurally identify the half notes in the melody at the end of each phrase. I also have students practice performing half notes on instruments by showing them how to play sustained notes on metallophones and having them play a half note bordun on D and A with the song.

3rd Grade

The melody of this song uses low E, G, A, and B, with the notes going up and down the scale, so it's perfect for recorders when students are working on those notes! I always start with G, then low E, and add A and B, and this one has been a great option for when we first put those 4 notes together because the melody doesn't skip around. You can read details about how and why I start on G/E in this blog post.

Upper Elementary

Believe it or not I just used this song with 5th grade last week! I like to pull out some of these short and simple songs that I typically use more with younger students as a quick way to review or introduce a specific musical element or concept in a succinct, clear way. In this case I use it as an example of minor tonality- I have students identify the tonality after singing it, then I use it to discuss how tonality can impact the message or mood of the music, and we talk about why the composer might have chosen minor to go with the poem's words. Then I use it as a way to get students thinking about other expressive elements that help communicate the mood or message of the song by experimenting with different dynamics, tempi, and articulations and picking the ones they think best fit the song.

If you haven't used this song in your elementary music lessons yet, I hope you'll try it out! It's such a simple song but works so well in every grade I've used it. Have more ideas for using this song as a teaching tool? I'd love to hear more lesson ideas in the comments below!

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Contemporary Palestinian Musicians

I'm always on the lookout for contemporary musicians from different cultures to share with my students, and I recently found myself down an online rabbit hole discovering several contemporary Palestinian musicians that are not only cool enough for my oldest students but have music videos and songs that are completely appropriate for elementary school and (obviously) musically interesting, creative, and well-executed. If you're looking for some new music, artists, or music-related videos to share with your students in elementary music class (or, honestly, with middle school or high school students as well), I highly recommend checking these out!

Zeyne (go to 1:56 for the song): 

Dana Salah: 

Noel Kharman: 

Walaa Sbait: 

Anees Mokhiber: 

Almultahiat: 

There are so many more wonderful contemporary artists, and of course many more older ones, but for this post I wanted to stick with songs with themes that aren't too heavy and artists who are current so they are sure to spark elementary students' interest without necessarily triggering a conversation you may not be equipped to handle appropriately in the context of the classroom. But I'm sure there are many more songs and musicians we can add to the list! If you have more names or titles you think should be on the list please leave a comment. 

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Music Teacher Planner

I love looking back through my planner over winter break before I take out the old weekly pages and add in the new ones starting in January, and as a music teacher who has found the perfect paper planner that works for me and uses it daily, I thought other teachers might like to see what it looks like when you truly use it for everything, every day! So here is my actual planner and what my monthly and weekly pages looked like so far this school year.

If you want to use the same printables I use for my planner, you can get them here (and keep in mind there are 6 other weekly planning templates to choose from depending on your class schedule)!

If you have any questions about anything you see, or about how I use my planner, please leave a comment or send me an email. I love talking planners any day! 

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