Miss Donna 4 Music

And music instruments! And bunnies!

Spring is in full swing! And spring fever’s got me feeling buzzed!

Actually I’ve had a bit of a brain fog with spring allergies so I inadvertently took a week or so off from posting on social media every day and that included my blog and even my email list. Now I’m playing catch up, getting organized, and back on track to tackle the last quarter of the school year.

This month I’m focusing on teaching my kiddos all about the instruments and their instrument families. So here are a few ideas on how I do that. I love games and centers, especially this time of year so all these ideas work well for either. Games and centers make my planning easier and less stressful, and it gets the kids moving around the room in a casual, less structured way but keeps them learning and engaged!

Instrument Games

Instrument Family Forte: This resource is actually 2 card games in 1. Use the rules for “Go Fish” to make pairs of instruments from the same instrument family OR play a “Rummy” style game to make books or 4 instruments from the same family.

Instrument Garden Grow: Students are assigned an instrument family garden box (i.e. Woodwinds, or Brass, etc.). Players draw flower cards with individual instruments on them. They must identify the instrument and see if it matches their garden box. If it does, they can “plant” that instrument in their garden. If it doesn’t, (for example, if they have a woodwind garden but they draw a trumpet flower) they can negotiate a trade with another team that may need that flower card.

Zoo Symphony: This one focuses mostly on Percussion family instruments that are used in most general music classrooms. These instruments include things like, hand drum, tambourine, maracas, boomwhackers, glockenspiels, etc, mores than the orchestra instruments. A game board is included where spaces are designated by color or shape to make it more accessible to more students.

The players use a spinner to see how many spaces on the board to move. If the player lands on a red square, they get a Gift Shop card. Each of these cards will have a picture of an instrument the player needs to identify. If a player lands on a blue circle, they will draw a research card which will ask them a trivia question about a certain instrument. If the player lands on a green triangle, they draw a petting zoo card. For these cards, the students will get to play a rhythm pattern on a specific instrument.

More Instruments

Other instrument activities I’m using this month:

Peter and the Wolf story book with some coloring pages (perfect if you have to plan quiet lessons due to state testing)

I Have Who Has (a quick little instrument ID game I found from another seller on TPT, Joanna Teaches Music)

Instrument 4 Corners and Composing (small cards with instrument names and simple rhythms and full-size pages with a single instrument, one from each instrument family…both from the same resource, Make Moments Matter

Easter and Bunnies

And of course, I would be completely remiss not to mention Easter!! I also recently realized recently I do not have nearly enough bunny-themed items in my TPT shop!! But I will be fixing that very soon!

Clovers and Bunnies: A time signature sorting game for 3/4 and 4/4 where students have to match the bunny rhythm to the correct clover time signature

Easter Chicks Chase: A solfege matching board game for Do, Re, Mi, So, La, and High Do.

Spring Sprouts Treble: a treble clef staff reading and matching game

Jesus Is Risen: if you’re looking for a Bible trivia game to review the biblical Easter story, this is it! I just used this last week in my Sunday school class and the kids had a blast!

Let me know if you check these out and try them in your class! I’d love to know how it goes!

Enjoy the spring energy!