Monthly Archive: February 2010

Elementary Children’s Music — Resources 0

Elementary Children’s Music — Resources

Here is a list of some of the things I’ve found especially useful in putting together music games, activities and so forth for our little classes (I’ll come back and add to this if I think of anything more): Kodaly Today: A Cognitive Approach to Elementary Music Education — by Micheal Houlahan/Philip Tacka:  This is a bit heavy on the philosophy and methodology of early music education and teaching, but...

More Whole Note, Half-Note, Quarter-Note Games 0

More Whole Note, Half-Note, Quarter-Note Games

Here are some games that are set to go, but that we have not yet played together. I’m sharing it now, though, along with my other music-related resources. Move forward the value of the note you pick up (thus, a half-note moves forward 2 spaces, a quarter note moves forward 1 space, a whole note moves ahead 4 spaces, etc.) Climb the Mountain Sheet: Cards for Climb the Mountain Game:...

Treble and Base Cleff Note Activities 0

Treble and Base Cleff Note Activities

You can find some very cute treble and base cleff fishynotes at susanparadis.com. If your child is learning the notes on piano there is avery cute icecream activity at laytonmusic.wordpress.com Here she has plain keyboard cards with a dot. (Like theicecream part below.) You can use them as three part cards, placing the keyboard and letter onto the full card, you could play memory,matching and so forth. Here is a...

Composer Posters and Picture Cards 0

Composer Posters and Picture Cards

If you’ve visited our website before, You’ll recognize thecraft table where I set up experiments. In the corneris where I stash some of my music stuff. I have theselovely composer posters there. Since I’m talking aboutresources, I thought I’d share the link where I got them:http://laytonmusic.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/composer-posters/She has lots to choose from. I noticed that she had these same composer cards in asmaller version and I thought that was perfect for...

Music with Tots and Preschoolers 0

Music with Tots and Preschoolers

We had our little music session as usual this week. The rhythm sticks below are just wood dowels that I cut down and sanded on the ends. We explored different ways of tapping them together (high, low, on the ground, on our head, end-to-end, etc.) Then we played our rhythm sticks to a fast-tempoed song. The kids all really like the knee-bouncing songs. This week we said the nursery rhyme...

Valentine’s Day Necklace; Valentine’s Day Heart Tree 0

Valentine’s Day Necklace; Valentine’s Day Heart Tree

I set out a couple of activities today with ED in mind, butall the kids participated. Above the kids are makingnecklaces. Below is our seasonal tree. You can always make your own tree out of pipe cleanersif you don’t have a little tree as we did at Christmas timeor find a branch and place it in a vase. http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/ has wonderfulseasonal activities like these. If you haven’t already, besure to...

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Forest Animal Tracks

We’ve continued with our Forest Unit. Today, LD did this quick animal track sorting activity. The animal tracks in the top row go with the story, The Mitten (see our activities here). I got them from http://kidssoup.com/ (a membership website). Update: More recently, my youngest was interested in studying animal tracks. I made a new packet of materials for her. This packet is available here: Animal Unit! ~Liesl Other related...

Winter Olympics 0

Winter Olympics

We’ve been doing some activities related to the winter Olympics.  If you have younger kids be sure to check out http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/OlympicTheme.htm. They have some printable activities you might find of use.

Science Center Monday — Water Surface Tension Experiments 0

Science Center Monday — Water Surface Tension Experiments

It has been a very busy week and I’m just now gettingaround to talking about this week’s science experiment. We talked about surface tension this week and how askin-like layer (called a meniscus) forms on the top ofthe water. We saw how this allows water to rise up overthe top of the little cup. All three of the kids repeated these experiments anumber of times. They especially liked using the...

Science Center Monday — Experiments: Float a Needle; Soap Propelled Boat 0

Science Center Monday — Experiments: Float a Needle; Soap Propelled Boat

Our third little experiment was to try tofloat a needle. First, we dropped a needle from up high, thenlower and lower to see what happened. Nomatter how close we were to the top of thewater, the needle sank. Then I said we were going to try to make aneedle float. The excitement and anticipation built… Gently the kids placed their needles on asmall piece of tissue paper. We watchedas the...

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Living and Non Living Sorting Activities

Be sure to grab our free Living – Nonliving Cards and Packet here: If you’ve read about our activities for a while, you’ll see that we tend to repeat things quite a bit. This week, I stuck the living, non-living sorting into the workbox once again. DD really enjoyed it (LD only did the cards below and that was only because DD asked him to!) I can’t remember where I...

What a Great Addition/Subtraction Game! 0

What a Great Addition/Subtraction Game!

When I was looking around at the School Bell a couple ofdays ago, I noticed her Gameboards. What a great game! Using a deck of cards from 0 to 10 (for the 10s family or0 to 7 with the 7s family, etc. ), the player turns overa card (2) then moves his/her piece to the number thatmakes 10. So, LD in the game above is moving his pieceto the next...

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Forest Biome: The Mitten — Activities

Today in our study of the forest animal habitat we read The Mitten. (affiliate link) We read Jan Brett’s book first. Using the beautiful mitten masks by Jan Brett the kids reenacted the story by putting the animal into the mitten (the kids are holding up the masks in the picture above). The mitten is just a file folder, drawn in the shape of a mitten. Jan Brett’s printables for...

Valentine’s Gem Craft 0

Valentine’s Gem Craft

ED and DD just loved this craft!! LD enjoyed it too,but the girls begged to do more because as DD said,“the gems are SOoooo BEAUuuuuutiful!” We made some cornstarch clay with red food dye 1 cup cornstarch1 cup baking soda1/2 cup table salt1 cup water Cook in a sauce pan til it forms a lump (no morethan a few minutes). Roll the dough out, make heart (and other shapes!). Then...