Artful, Tuneful, Beatful

I strongly believe that incorporating school events and themes into the music classroom is important, particularly at the primary level.  It is good for the kids, reinforces their learning across the curriculum, builds positive relationships between music teachers and their colleagues and, lets face it, makes everyone look good to the boss.  That being said it is just as important to make sure that we are not subordinating music objectives to other objectives.  After all in every school I have ever worked in or even heard of students get FAR more time studying math, language arts, science and social studies than they do music.

Today, of course, is Earth day, a holiday I feel very strongly about.  I consider myself an environmentalist and try to instill the values of good environmental stewardship in people around me (of all ages!)  Today we did an activity to acknowledge Earth day that is something I usually do anyway, I just tweaked it a tiny bit by briefly allowing the children to tell me what Earth day is about and things we can do to take care of the earth.  I worked them around to how planting a garden is a nice way to care for the earth and then we did the activity “Digging Up a Hole” from one of my VERY favorite books, 101 Rhythm Instrument Activities for Young Children by Abigail Flesch Connors.

This is an activity using shakers in which students sing about and pantomime the various stages of planting a garden starting with “digging up a hole” and ending with “plant is gonna grow”, set to “Dinah Won’t You Blow”.  For the sake of Ms. Connors’s copyright I won’t go into the details of each verse but hopefully you get the idea!  It is one of these wonderful piggyback songs that students pick up very quickly because the words are mostly repeated over and over.  At the end I let each child tell me what he or she grew before putting the shaker away in the bag.

I really think we can satisfy our supervisors by incorporating non-musical objectives without making music secondary in our classroom.  I am very stubborn and feel strongly about children’s need for music education so believe me when I tell you musical objectives are always on the front burner for me.  That doesn’t mean I have to be SO stubborn that I refuse to work other things in along the way!

I looooove podcasts.  They are perfect for the car, or the treadmill, or to listen to while knitting.  Most of my favorites are from NPR (This American Life, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, The Splendid Table.)

I also love music and love technology, so imagine how much a L-O-V-E something that combines all three!!  Carol Broos (twitter) and Brenda Muench (twitter) are both wonderful people to follow around the internet if you are interested in edtech, particularly as it applies to music.  The two have joined forces to host a podcast called Musically and Technically Speaking where they share some of their wonderful ideas and techniques.  What I like about these ladies from the podcast as well as their blogs and forum postings is that they are really into good teaching, not just toys.  This is not “what can I do to find an excuse to use technology” it is “how can I use technology to enhance what I am doing.”  I think the distinction is very, very important.

As a side note as a fulltime pre-K music teacher I’d like to empathize with whichever one of the ladies said, referring to kindergartners, “I just have a hard time dealing with them sometimes.”  So true, they really are a different ball of wax.  In my own times of frustration it is comforting to know that I am not the only one who sometimes feels as if I am herding cats.

So if your interested in good teaching, music and educational technology go ahead and throw this podcast on while you commute or do the dishes.  I don’t think you’ll regret it!