a BRAND NEW YEAR

This year I am doing things a little differently. I have two new schools. Now I will be teaching dance at  Whittier and at Pleasant Green Elementary I am helping to teach the students Patriotic Song for a special program for Veterans Day, Christmas songs for their sing aroun and later on in the year I will be teaching them dance. This changes my schedule drastically and I am still learning how to cover the curriculum and fulfill the needs of the school, my classes and the individual students.  I want to start a tab for dance on this page, but I am going to save that for another day when I feel more confident with what I am doing with that art form. Its funny dance and dancing is my favorite thing, but teaching it to the larger groups at Whittier is proving to be a challenge that I am going to meet and master, just you wait and see.

New links for this year

THIRD GRADE IDEA- A few of my schools use the Leader in Me program from Franklin Covey. Fremont Elementary my Thursday school was one of the first Leader in Me schools. With my third graders we decided to learn the cup song rhythm. We use Count on Me by Bruno Mars to start with because it goes perfectly with their Imagine it Big Idea of Friendship and its slower with a very defined beat to help them start practicing the Cup Song Rhythm. There is a cup song that someone made for the Leader in Me that we use as well then you can use this rhythm in any 4/4 song. Its to play with it to different songs.

MY FAVORITE FINDING THIS MONTH
I have been using a couple of  Ella Jenkins songs since my first year at this job as a Fine Arts Teacher, but this year I bought a few albums from ITUNES and I have been having a blast learning and sharing these songs. Here a a few I have used.

Here are some great singing games from Vincent Bates' Youtube Channel.

FUN SINGING GAMES

 
BRAIN DANCE