Organized Chaos

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Teacher Tuesday: ideas to teach 4 voices (vocal timbres)

This week I will be exploring the 4 voices (speaking, calling, whispering, and singing), and other vocal timbres, with my kindergarten classes. Today I thought I would share some of my favorite lesson activities to introduce and practice the 4 voices.

1. Apple Tree

This game is my favorite way to introduce different voices- I do this with kindergarten and I have 3rd graders who are still asking to play it! First we learn the song:

credit: Music a la Abbott

Once the students know the song, I have everyone spread out around the room, sitting down on the floor. Everyone sings the song together, and after we sing "knocks me out", the students pretend that an apple knocked them out and lie down on the floor. I tell them the only thing that can wake them up is my singing voice. Then I repeat the song with all kinds of different voices, switching between voices mid-song. When the students hear my singing voice, they sit back up and sing with me until the end of the song. The first student to be sitting upright and singing with me at the correct time wins (and if they sit up too early they are out for that round). They love it because I do all kinds of silly voices, not just speaking and whispering, and I love it because they get lots of practice distinguishing the singing voice from other vocal timbres!

2. Boom Chicka Boom

This is a great song for teaching echo songs, and I always bring it back when we are practicing echo format, but it is also another great song to sing in a variety of voices! Here's an example if you've never heard the song:

There are tons of variations you can do with this one, obviously, and I usually come up with one or two new ones each year. My favorites, though, are "custodian style", which I do in the low voice of our school custodian (who is great and the students love him) and change the words to "broom chicka mop-a chicka", and "baby style", where I change the words to "poop chicka mama-chicka" (which pretty consistently makes everyone fall on the floor laughing).

3. Variations

I love using this opportunity to sing some songs that I either want to throw in but haven't found a good spot in the curriculum to put it, or that the students have requested (or have some connection to). We sing the song in our best singing voices, then we do the other 3 "main" voices (speaking, calling, and whispering), and then I have students suggest other voices. Giants, frogs, babies, and robots are usually popular choices :)

4. Voices Poem

Once we have spent plenty of time exploring our voices, it's time to actually label some of them. I found out about this cute little poem from another music teacher in my district and plan to use it this year to assess how well students can switch between voices:

This is my speaking voice - I use it every day

This is my whisper voice - it's quiet don't you say

This is my calling voice - I use it to say "Hey!"

This is my singing voice - I like it, it's okay!*

*1st part of this line is sung on "sol", the last note is sung on "do"

What are your favorite ways to teach and explore vocal timbre with your students? Share your ideas in the comments!

Monday, October 5, 2015

Mommy Monday: mini chalkboards for budding artists

I love having art and craft supplies for my preschool-age children to use. I grew up loving arts and crafts myself, and my girls are obsessed with creating right now! Painting, coloring, cutting, gluing, stamping, taping, drawing- you name it, they love it. But of course at this age, they don't stay focused on one medium for long, so having supplies for lots of different types of projects makes them more excited and inspired. I'm always looking for new ways to let them create, and my latest addition is probably the easiest and cheapest one yet: small chalkboards on the wall.

I know I've seen tons of AMAZING pictures, blog posts, and pins of entire walls painted with chalkboard paint for kids to go crazy on. As much as I love that idea, it's not practical for us since we are renting a small apartment *cue sad trombones*, so I had always drooled over those wonderful photos and moved on. Then I was looking for a way to keep a little memo board near my bed (more on that in a future post...) and I had one of those "duh!" moments.

I used up most of the rest of my roll of black contact paper to cut out some circles, tracing the outline of one of our plastic plates to get the right shape. Then I just peeled off the backing paper and stuck it on the wall next to their art table! I gave them each some white chalk so I don't have to worry if some of the chalk gets on our white walls.

Such a simple concept but the girls love it! And when it gets old, I don't have to feel sad about throwing it away- no serious time or money wasted!

Do any of you have a chalkboard wall at your house? Or are you a renter who drools over chalkboard walls like me? Or maybe you don't get all the fuss about chalkboards to begin with? Share your thoughts in the comments :)

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Plan with Me Sundays: October 2015

It's time for another planner share post- I seriously canNOT believe it is already October! My goodness, I was just getting used to the idea that August had ended...

I'm linking up with Kreative in Kindergarten and Keeping Up with Mrs. Harris to share my latest planner updates. Be sure to check out all of the planners by clicking on the picture below- I am always amazed at the beautiful spreads and inspired by the awesome tips each month!

So.... you may remember that last month (my first time sharing any sort of attempt at decorating my planner) I told you that I would most likely never be decorating my weekly spreads- just my monthly calendars at most.

That was a lie.

In my defense, I didn't know at the time that it would become a lie, but still.

So yes, this month I have some weekly spreads to share with you! For those who are new to my planner- I use a teacher/life/home management/blog/TPT/everything planner-in-one system that I created myself. You can see an in-depth tour in the video at the bottom of this post, and check out this post to see how I set everything up using the discbound Arc system and tons of DIY's.

I'm going to go back to the first weekly spread that I ever decorated and show you each week's layout up through this coming week to give you a quick tour of what I've been doing. I am still experimenting and finding my groove, but I definitely look forward to my quality planner time each weekend and it really helps motivate me to plan out my lessons and keep track of all my appointments and to-do's! (I apologize in advance for the lighting in these pictures... We've had cloudy, rainy weather for so many days I finally had to give up on decent natural light.)

This is September 7-13. I tried layering some washi on top of each other. I sortof like it, but it made the page too thick (in my already thick planner!). I had been writing all of the lesson plans for each grade level in a different color (to match my color-coding in my classroom), but since I was adding color to the page itself I just wrote each grade/class name in the assigned color and wrote the lesson plans themselves in black.

Here is September 14-20:

I started using some of my DIY stickers in the weekly layout for the first time and I liked it! The crazy washi color overload at the bottom: not so much. Oh well.

Moving on to September 21-27:

This was the first layout that I really liked. I felt like it was pretty to look at but more sophisticated- I wasn't embarrassed to pull it out at our staff meeting and worry about looking too cutesy or something. I started using washi tape (cut into flags) as well and loved that too.

Now we're on September 28-October 4:

I experimented with some other stickers I had (the tan colored ones you see towards the top) and didn't like it quite as much as my other stuff but I don't hate it. You can also see here how I often use the notes section to hold sticky notes with song lyrics- I keep the sticky notes together after I use them so I can pull them out and stick them in my plan book the following year. Yeah, I'm fancy like that.

And this is the upcoming week, which I just finished planning out yesterday:

Obviously I have been into the brown washi. I also brought back some of the stickers from the $1 sticker books at Michael's and stuck them in the notes section, which I am liking so far. We'll see if it bothers me come staff meeting time ;)

I hope you got some inspiration for your own planning! Don't forget to check out all of the other linkups this month by heading over to the linky party! Oh, and if you are new to these parts and want the complete tour of my planner, here you go:

Friday, October 2, 2015

Fermata Friday: October 2, 2015

Welcome to this week's installment of my weekly linky party, Fermata Fridays! This is a chance for music education bloggers to share blog posts with readers and bloggers alike, so we can all mingle and learn from each other. Readers, you are going to love all of the awesome blog posts that are out there- I hope you discover some new blogs to follow and get some new inspiration for your teaching! Bloggers, make sure you read the directions carefully before linking up to make sure we keep the party fun for everyone. Thanks! :)

Here are the rules for the linky party:

1. Add the linky image to your blog post, blog sidebar, linky party roundup, or other similar location on your blog and link it back to the party. Copy and paste the code for this button, or use the image above and link to the label "Fermata Fridays".

2. Add up to two blog post links to the linky. The posts can be old or new (but no posts that have already been linked up to Fermata Fridays in the past), on any topic related to music teaching, but must not be primarily featuring a product. It's fine to have a link to a relevant product within a post, but that should not be the primary focus of the post. I reserve the right to delete a link that is too product-focused. If you're not sure, just ask! :)

3. Leave a thoughtful comment on at least two other links, including the one right before yours. Add #fermatafridays to your comment so bloggers know where you found them!

4. Pin at least one other link to one of your Pinterest boards.

5. Make sure you are following me on Pinterest. I will be pinning every link to the Fermata Fridays board each week.

6. Make sure you are following me on Facebook and check back next Friday- I will be featuring one of the links from the previous week's linky on my Facebook page each Friday!

The linky will be open every Friday starting at 4:00am EST and will be open for links all day.

An InLinkz Link-up

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