Miss Donna 4 Music

Things to be thankful for

November is a special month in the elementary music classroom. The excitement of the upcoming holidays energizes the students, but it can also make classroom management and personal well-being more challenging for teachers. Today I’m going to share with you one of my favorite November lessons for engaging your K-6th grade music students while celebrating the season, and a few effective management strategies, and self-care practices to keep you feeling your best throughout the busy season.

Great Big House

I love doing this song, Great Big House, with all my kids, K-6, this time of year. We get to sing about pumpkin pie, which I love, and there is so much we can do with this song for all the grade levels. Whenever I find an activity that I can use with all grade levels, it makes me so happy because it means less things to plan and less time planning!! And who doesn’t like to save time? Especially as busy teachers who wear a lot of different hats!

Steady Beat and Half Notes

With my younger kids, we take time learning the song and keeping the steady beat. Once we are confident in that steady beat, this is a great time to introduce (or review) the half note. There are 2 spots in the song that use a half note.

So we talk about those 2 spots (“high” and “pie”) where there is no word but we still count a beat and there’s an extra pie! Technically the word “high” is 2 quarter notes that are slurred together, but for K-2 graders it’s easier for them to understand the half note at this point in their music education. We can go over the correct notation later. So we practice different movements and body percussion, such as clapping, patting, stomping, snapping, tapping, all while singing the song, keeping the steady beat and marking where those half notes are so they can feel them.

Side note: I find a lot of younger students have not yet learned how to snap their fingers. I always tell them, “First, of all don’t say you can’t. It’s just that you haven’t earned yet. Even if you don’t make the sound you can still move your fingers. That’s how we practice and learn!”

Body Percussion or Instruments

For the older students, we learn the song and start with keeping the steady beat by clapping or patting or some simple body percussion movement and we briefly talk about and review the half note and where they might be found in this song. You may or may not choose to go over the slurred quarter notes at this point with them. I usually save this for later in the year because it’s not a major concept I’m going over right now.

Right now I want to focus on them learning the song and getting some movement. So I created 4 different rhythm parts for this song and each part can be performed with a different body percussion movement or an instrument. I usually start with movement and in another class another day, if we review this song, we add instruments. BUT we learn each body percussion part one at a time. The body percussion rhythms do not match the steady beat nor do they match the rhythm of the song all the time so they provide an extra challenge for older kids.

Once we learn each part separately, I break the class into 4 groups and assign each group a part. Then we perform all the parts together!! I also then rotate the groups so each group gets to perform each body percussion part with the others. It’s slightly chaotic but it is organized chaos and great fun!

Rhythm, Solfege, and Chords

We can also use this song to go over some rhythms – a couple of the body percussion parts have dotted quarter notes and single eighth notes – and solfege patterns. This song covers Do, Re, Mi, So, and La. I like to put the words of the song on the board and have the students figure out the solfege as we sing it. This resource (which is available in my TPT shop!) also includes lyrics with chords in 2 different keys! Students can learn about what makes a chord, what notes go in each chord, and add boomwhackers or melody instruments to create a chord accompaniment to the song!

Managing Chaos

So with the holidays approaching, so comes extra energy and sometimes chaos. The trick for us teachers is to learn how to harness the energy and chaos for good in our music classroom! The best way I have found to do that is to embrace it!! Yes, thats’ right, embrace the energy and chaos! By having our students MOVE!!! Kids need to move! Especially at times like holidays or testing or when they can’t go outside. And music class is the perfect opportunity to give them time to move in a way thats organized and educational!

Using activities like Freeze Dance and 4 Corners Games (which require very little prep and materials and they always love it), and Write the Room activities, body percussion activities, and folk dances keep the kids engaged, moving, and expending all that excess energy in a way that’s healthy and keeps them learning while having fun! Most of the time they don’t even realize they are learning so it makes my job easier!

Self Care

Having easy, low prep activities ready to go this time of year will save us time and our sanity, which is a big part of our self-care. There’s a lot of running around that takes place at the holidays which often gets people (young and not-so-young) run down and sick. So don’t forget to take time to slow down, rest, and breathe. Not every music lesson has to be ground-breaking and profound. Sometimes its okay to have a simple worksheet or do freeze dance 3 classes in a row to give ourselves (and the kids) a break to relax and have fun. After all isn’t that what music class is all about? FUN!

Check out Great Big House in my TPT shop to get all the pumpkin pie fun for November! And don’t forget to have some fun while harnessing the chaos!