When I taught 1st grade at Chalkville Elementary, I used music as cues in our day. Our classroom was a portable classroom (trailer= loving called the tin can ). To make it more "homey" I would turn off the overly bright overhead lights and had lots of softer lamps to give us workable light.
When my students would come in from the bus I had soft instrumental music playing. This helped create a calm and comfortable atmosphere in our room. It also was a cue that if the music was playing, it was a quiet working time. They would start on their morning work and I would turn the music off when it was time to officially start our day. At that point we would warm up a bit---with some more lively music. We did head, shoulders, knees, and toes and shake your sillies out to get us up and awake and to help burn some energy before we hit the ground running with our daily activities.
Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes by Jack Hartman
Shake Your Sillies Out
If weather prevented us from going to the playground for recess, we would have dance parties to all sorts of silly songs!
Not only is music good to set the mood of your room or to burn some extra energy, but music is such a great tool to teach!
Anyone remember learning the names of the 50 states through song?!?! (I bet your are humming it in your head now!)
In preschool, I use lots of learning songs with my class. Here are some of my favorites!
Circle Time
Months of the Year Macarena
Dr. Jean's Days of the Week (Adam's Family)
Alphabet/Letter Sounds
ABC Rocky by Greg and Steve
Workout to the Letter Sounds
Letter Sounds by Jack Hartman
Counting Songs
Let's Get Fit Count to 100
Count to 100 with Grandma and Grandpa by Jack Hartman
Silly Songs/Brain Breaks
Tooty Ta by Dr. Jean
Tony Chestnut by The Learning Station
I could go on and on! There are so many wonderful resources on YouTube that use songs to help teach!
No comments:
Post a Comment