Easy Home Organization Tips to Try Today

It's Spring Cleaning season, which for me means I have the itch to clean up but no time to actually do it! Today I wanted to share a few organization tips for the house that are easy and quick, so we can feel good about tackling some of those messes while being realistic about our busy schedules this time of year!

1. Outdoor Toy Storage

All you need is a hanging storage organizer! We're pulling these back out now that the weather is getting warmer and it's so nice to have a place to put everything.

2. Kid's Hair Accessories Storage

For me with two young daughters, this has been a life-saver!

3. Kid's Artwork DIY Display

One of the quickest things to pile up (literally) in my house is the artwork my daughters bring home from school! This is an easy display to set up anywhere in the house and rotate out new artwork when it comes home.

4. Re-Organized Entryway

A few hooks and some bins and we have a spot to keep our shoes, bags, and coats organized!

5. Laundry Organization

This is probably the simplest but still one of my favorite ideas: a easy way to keep those stain removers handy in the laundry room!

I hope you find some simple projects to help you spruce up your home this spring and ready to tackle your busy schedule this season!

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My Favorite Lesson for Teaching Do / Re / Mi and Pentatonic

**This post has been updated: see the most recent post HERE.

I'm continuing my series on melodic teaching strategies today with my favorite lesson ideas for focusing on the do/ re/ mi pitch set. If you sequence your teaching by starting with these 3 notes, you can use these ideas to work on just do/re/mi. If you, like me, start with mi/ sol/ la and add do and re afterwards to make a pentatonic scale, you can use them that way as well.

After focusing on mi / sol / la in 2nd grade, I add do and re in 3rd grade. There are TONS of pentatonic songs using do, re, mi, sol, and la from all over the world that are perfect for practicing those pitches, but to first introduce do and re, especially in relation to mi, I like to use a verse from "Camptown Races":

When I have taught the song to introduce do, re, and mi without teaching mi, sol, and la beforehand, I teach the song as a call and response song: I sing the first two measures of each line, and the students respond with the "doo dah" parts in the last two measures of each line. Once they have learned the song, we review the concept of home/resting tone and identify the last note as the home/resting note and label that as "do". Then we listen to the last 2 measures of the song and identify the high/ middle/ low notes in the phrase, and label those as mi/ re/ do. Then we practice singing the two "response" parts with solfege names and hand signs.

Now since my students already know mi, sol, and la when I teach this song, I teach my students the whole song rather than singing it in call and response form. Then we review mi, sol, and la by talking about the notes in the first 2 measures and practice singing those notes with solfege names and hand signs. Then we look at the last 2 measures: hey, there are notes that are even lower than mi! From there I introduce do and re and we practice singing the last phrase with solfege names and hand signs as well.

Once we've practiced singing the note names in the song, I introduce the "me dodo" game. If you saw last week's post on mi/ sol/ la, then this game works the exact same way the "salami" game does: I sing a 3-note phrase with hand signs and students echo it back, but if I sing mi-do-do (which sounds like I'm calling myself a "dodo") then they are not supposed to sing it back. I of course mix all 5 pitches into the phrases they echo so that they get plenty of practice with all of them! Once they can consistently sing the pitches with correct hand signs, I up the ante. First I sing the notes with hand signs but humming instead of singing the names, and they have to sing them back with the note names. Then I take away my hands and continue humming and have them sing and sign the notes back, and then I use just my hands and have them sing and sign the notes back. It takes quite a bit of concentration!

As with the other solfege pitches that I introduce, the last step is to practice notating. To practice with all 5 notes (which can be pretty overwhelming at first), I bring back the monster magnets that I introduce in 2nd grade, and then later have them use solfege stickers, color-coded to match our boomwhackers, to practice translating a rhythmic composition to a melodic one. If you haven't already, be sure to read about both of those DIY manipulatives in the posts below- they are so effective in helping kids see the different pitches more concretely and keeping them engaged while they practice notation! 

In my case, since students now know the 5 pitches of a pentatonic scale after introducing do and re, this is also when we first talk about the word and concept of "pentatonic" music. The best way that I've found to have students grasp the idea of pentatonic melodies and see how versatile that set of pitches can be is to have them improvise with pentatonic notes on barred percussion. We get out the xylophones and remove the F and B bars (the "burgers and fries") and then take turns making up whatever they want for 4 beats each. They're always surprised at how they can use those notes in any order or combination and still sound like "real music"! 

After those lessons, the rest of the year is spent practicing and reviewing do, re, mi, sol, and la and learning lots of pentatonic songs! You can find more ideas for teaching those and other pitches, along with tips for teaching melodic concepts in general, in the MusicEd Blogs melody ebook (download it for free right here)! If you missed them, be sure to check out my previous posts on introducing sol/mi in 1st grade and introducing la in 2nd grade. And if you want to see the full lesson plans for how I teach the pentatonic pitches throughout the year in third grade, along with all the materials I use, you'll find them in my 3rd grade curriculum set here. 

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Planner Quick Tip: monthly calendars

This week's planner tip is all about monthly calendars! I've been asked by a number of people how I use my monthly calendars, and how I decide which things to write down on my month view and which things to put in the weekly pages- sometimes it can seem redundant! As with all things planning, my use of the monthly and weekly pages has changed over time, but today I wanted to share how I use my monthly calendars to hopefully help you use them more effectively.

For me, the difference between my monthly and weekly pages (and why I use both) is that the monthly calendar gives me a way to see my availability more long-term and plan ahead for things like birthdays and holidays that I need to know before the week of, and the weekly pages gives me the space I need to write out details for each day. In theory I could just write everything on my weekly pages, but the problem with that is I would have to be constantly flipping through pages to make sure I send a card for that birthday 2 weeks from now, or see when our next free weekend might be for a playdate, or make sure I have set up a sub for that doctor's appointment next week.

Here are some more specific examples of the types of things I tend to track on my monthly calendars:

• holidays and birthdays
• school/ work special events and days off
• doctor and other appointments made long in advance
• my children's custody/visitation schedule
• vacations and trips

I used to write anything that came up before the actual week on my monthly calendars- I never wrote anything on any weekly pages until that week. But now if it's something that I don't need to know or see until that week, I'll add it to that weekly page instead to keep the monthly calendar less cluttered (that might be things like assemblies or meetings that I'm not preparing anything for).

I know others also mark things like bills to pay, trash days, and other regular occurrences, but I tend not to include things in my planner that I already do as a matter of routine. If you have the space and want to mark those things, there's no reason not to!

If you want to stay up to date on all my planner news and share inspiration and ideas with other planner friends, you're welcome to come join my planner group on Facebook! The newest updates to the #PlanMyWholeLife planners for the 2018-2019 school year will be coming very soon...

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March Favorites 2018

I love looking back on the month of March because there's always so much to celebrate: the first signs of spring, fun holidays, and of course Music In Our Schools Month! I can't wait to share some of my highlights from this past month with you, and I hope you all had a marvelous March as well!

1. Floral planner spreads

With all the snow storms that hit us all the way into the middle of March, I was especially motivated to cover my planner in flowers and springtime colors! I have been having so much fun and it has been a great way to stay on top of all the many events and schedule changes going on without getting overwhelmed. If you want to see my planner spreads each week/month, follow me on Instagram. And if you want some tips for decorating your planner in a way that maximizes functionality, check out this video over on my YouTube channel!

2. Music In Our Schools Month

I always LOVE celebrating MIOSM, and this year I tried something new: I had staff fill out a survey on musical experiences they had growing up and/or participate in currently, and each day gave students a clue to see if they could guess which staff member was being described. The principal announced the clue (and the previous day's answer) on the morning announcements, and I added the clues to a bulletin board just inside the school entrance as well. The whole school community loved it, and I think it was such a powerful message for everyone to see all the different ways that music plays a role in our lives!

Of course the other special activities I continued from previous year were highlights as well: you can read more about the Rhythm Battle and Disco Duel in this post, and see the song suggestion box that I put out in the lobby for people to request music to be played each morning in this post (which also has more information about the bulletin board mentioned above). So much fun!

3. Teaching strategies for melodic concepts

If you haven't noticed, I've been talking a lot about teaching melodic concepts over the last couple of months. To be honest, I'm much more confident in teaching rhythms than I am teaching pitches in elementary school, so it has been really exciting for me to dive deeper into this area! If you haven't seen it already, run, don't walk, to download a free copy of the Melody Teaching Handbook from MusicEd Blogs right here. There is no information to enter or hoops to jump through- just a collection of the best ideas for teaching melodic concepts from some of the top music education authors on the internet. It is seriously such a great resource! Maybe you're too busy to really dig through everything right now, but this would be a great file to save for some summer reading!

I'm also in the middle of a blog series on my own favorite melodic teaching strategies as well- here's my most recent post on teaching mi / sol / la- so stay tuned over the next few weeks if you want to hear about my favorite lesson ideas for teaching specific pitches.

4. More music education ideas

As you know I feature some of my favorite articles from other music education authors each Friday on Facebook and Pinterest (if anyone has an article or author to suggest don't forget you can submit proposals for "Fermata Friday" features right here!). I always learn so much from these, and I hope you are just as inspired as I have been this month! Click on the picture to read each article below:

And now it's time to head into one of my favorite months of the year: April! I can't wait to see what's in store :) If you'd like to see the lessons I have planned for the month ahead and get more timely resources, ideas, and inspiration sent straight to your inbox, don't forget to sign up for the newsletter! Click here to sign up!

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