Got Music?

Singing has always been a part of my classroom. One of my fondest memories was during my second year of teaching, when one of my students learned to read through song.

Singing can lift the heart, unite people together, and teach.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Dr. Jean

(Who doesn't love her?  Even my husband and son know a few of her songs!  :) )

Favorites:

Kiss Your Brain

Shake a Hand

Who Let the Letters Out! 

Macarena's Bones

The Water Cycle

Five Senses

Parts of a Flower

Favorites from this CD:     

Deck the Halls

Pepperoni Pizza

Syllable Clap

Happy Birthday Letters        

Slide and Blend

Lifetime Words

Karate Writing

Good Bye Friends

Greg and Steve

(They have been a part of my teaching since the beginning)

Favorites:

Yellow Submarine
Sunshine Medley
This Land Is Your Land
Rockin the USA

Love These!:
The Body Rock
Tummy Tango
Animal Action I and II
Show Me What You Feel

Mark D. Pencil

Top Picks:

I Can Count to 100

Counting by 2s

Counting by 5s

Counting by 10s

Super E

Two Vowels Together

The Exercise Game #1, #2, and #3

Charlotte Diamond

Favorites:

Four Hugs a Day

I Wanna Be a Dog

I Am a Pizza

Looking for Dracula

Octopus

Each Of Us is a Flower

Many of Charlotte Diamond's, Raffi's and other artists' songs have song cards which can be purchased here.  These cards are great and also come with a little book that you can copy for your class.

Want to incorporate technology with music?  See Kelly's Kindergarten for Powerpoints to many Dr. Jean and Jack Hartmann songs or Harry's Kindergarten for awesome videos!

I know I forgot many other favorites such as Jose Luis Orozco, Raffi, and many country music artisits.  But, that means, there will be more on music soon!

What's on your must have CDs?  I'm always on the lookout for great CDs that I can use many, many, songs.  Leave your comments.  I LOVE them!

Happy Learning and Teaching!

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Skeletons

Instead of doing the traditional pumpkin and Halloween activities, I decided to teach about skeletons.  My class loved it! First, we began by learning Macarena Bones by Dr. Jean.  I love her!   If you are not familiar with Dr. Jean, you must check out her site.  This is such a catchy jingle.  To help us learn the body parts, we labeled a skeleton like this one.  (This actually took two days.  We only have about 30 minutes for science and social studies three times a week.)

Then, we learned about our joints and their importance for movement.  I used the book below for our project.



The kids made an arm bones band.  They turned out so cute!  Sorry, that there are no pictures.  I was busy taping them together and didn't have time to take photos!  But I did take a few pictures of the worksheet we used from the above book. 

Finally, we made a skeleton using q-tips.  I was very impressed at their ability to listen to directions.   We will wrap up the unit by learning about our muscles and the importance of our organs.  What I love about this unit is that it can be done any time of the year!

Hope you'll give it a try in your classroom.

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