The Summer Olympics evoked deep emotions as I cheered on athletes. Inspired by the event, I enhanced a music lesson on Queen's "We Will Rock You" to cater to both advanced and novice students. The lesson includes teaching tools like manipulatives, melodic phrases, and dance breaks. Options for presenting the content include video, score, pitched, and unpitched instruments. Remember that you can use my YouTube channel or if the video is too busy, my Soundslice channel to turn off some of the busyness.
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Still teaching? I like to end my year or begin a holiday break with my younger students playing music activities that reinforce musical skills like steady beat, piano and forte, sol-mi-la combinations, movements, and more. Here is an activity using Doggie Doggie. It involves the movement game, singing sol-mi-la combinations, and a simple orffestration/boomwhacker arrangement, all in one video.
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Need a Fresh Scarf Activity for Your Littlest Learners? 🧣🎶
If your scarf routine is starting to feel a little stale, this playful Scarf Play-Along is just what you need! With a buzzing bee, movement prompts, and two tempo options, it's perfect for bringing new energy into your Pre-K–1st grade classes. Plus, there's a free set of manipulatives to help you prep!
👉 Click to read more and grab the video!
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🎶 Free and easy to use on any device, even offline.
🌈 Sounds like a real xylophone with colorful, Boomwhacker-style keys.
🎵 Includes solfege mode and chromatic scale options for flexible teaching.
🧑🏫 Great for classrooms with touchscreen, keyboard, or mouse controls.
🎶 Xylophone that removes bars, adds solfa, adds chromatics, and can record, along with so much more.
🎸 Ukulele for both hands, fingerpicking or strumming chords.
🎵Recorder to assist with fingering notes and helping those who cannot play the recorder traditionally.
🧑🏫 Virtual classroom percussion instruments. Great when you are traveling to various rooms and cannot bring instruments with you!
🌈 Uses default colors, Chroma-Notes colors, and Figurenotes.
🎵Soprano, alto, or bass instruments.
🧑🏫 Easily remove bars and includes presets for pentatonic scales and borduns.
🧒 Kid-Friendly Design: Features a straightforward interface ideal for young learners to explore Boomwhacker sounds.
🎨 Color-Coded Notes: Utilizes Boomwhacker colors to help students associate pitches with visual cues.
🎹 Interactive Play: Allows users to click on notes to hear corresponding pitches, facilitating auditory learning.
💻 No Installation Needed: Accessible directly through the browser without requiring downloads or installations.
🍅🕺 Veggie Rhythm Lesson and Play-Along Video 🎶🥕
Adding to last year’s dance & rhythm play-along video with call-and-response fun using vegetable names—perfect for end-of-year energy and rhythm review - is setting it up with the chant, Chop Chop Chippity Chop. 🥦🎵
✅ Engaging call-and-response
✅ Quarter, eighth, half notes + quarter rests
✅ BONUS: “Chop Chop Chippity Chop” rhythm chant added!
✅ Link to free manipulative downloads on Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech/extras)
💡 Whether you need a fresh brain break, a rhythm review, or a high-engagement activity—this one's a hit.
Click to see what all the buzz is about and bring the Veggie Dance into your classroom! 🥬👇
Like my resources? Please feel free to buy me a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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🎶 Want free, high-quality music symbols with transparent backgrounds for your lessons?
See how this one website can level up your worksheets, videos, and slides in seconds! 👉
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School's almost out, and you're running on empty—but your music lessons don’t have to be!
Get 5 fun and interactive end-of-year music activities that need minimal prep but deliver maximum engagement.
From play-alongs and scavenger hunts to movie scoring in YuStudio, MusicFirst Elementary has you covered!
Perfect for PreK–5
Includes improvisation, composition, and digital creation
Easy to implement, even in those chaotic final weeks
Click to explore the countdown and finish the year strong!
#ElementaryMusic #MusicTeacherLife #EndOfYearActivities #MusicFirst
https://youtu.be/4iwPxKQ4328?si=zXCQTYAzmXkC-z4f
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🤩 📸 Creating a headshot wall to showcase your elementary musical stars is a fantastic way to highlight your students and add a personal touch to your performance space! With Canva’s Magic Grab Tool, you can easily design a professional-looking display without the need for complex equipment or a green screen. From taking simple photos of your cast to customizing your playbill backdrop, this step-by-step guide will show you how to create a stunning headshot wall that celebrates your talented performers. Ready to bring this idea to life? Click to read more and learn how to make it happen!
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It's that magical moment each year when May the Fourth swings by, and music educators in elementary schools turn it into "May the Fourth Be With You" extravaganza! Even though it falls on a Saturday, you can still celebrate it early on Friday or late on Monday. Picture music vibes from John Williams's Star Wars tunes and jazzy beats like "Take Five" by Paul Desmond, courtesy of the Dave Brubeck Quartet. With a galaxy of over 90 awesome activities to pick from, I've whipped up a Wakelet featuring these fantastic categories:
Movement (Move-Its) Activities
Parachute and Scarf Activities
Rhythm Play-Alongs
Boomwhacker Play-Alongs
Orff, Ukulele, and Recorder Play-Alongs
Music Creation Activities
Line Rider and Fun Videos
Lesson Resources (Some free and some paid)
5/4 Extra Activities (involving Take Five)!
Tip: Please view the video in your classroom before you use it with your students to make sure it is appropriate for your teaching scenario and your age group.
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Not long ago, learning to code required a deep commitment — you had to fully immerse yourself in the world of programming, and even then, mastering it could take years. Today, AI has made coding far more accessible. You no longer need extensive coding knowledge to create sophisticated projects. For example, you can now simply instruct AI to build a website that hosts a game where students match dynamic symbols with their corresponding terms. Tools like Canva make it even easier to bring these ideas to life!
Here is the next play-along video in the End-Of-The-Year Series: American Authors’s Best Day of My Life play-along for ukuleles, boomwhackers, and classroom instruments. It is versatile enough so that you can use this with your younger students to play the rhythm patterns at the top of the screen with classroom instruments or play the boomwhackers with the moving color-coded rectangles. Finally, you can use this with your older students performing the ukulele C, F, and minor chords.
This exciting play-along features both ukuleles and boomwhackers, and it's designed to be accessible for all skill levels, making it ideal for elementary music classrooms. Whether your students are seasoned ukulele players or beginners just starting out with boomwhackers, this play-along has something for everyone! The manipulatives can be found for free at https://buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech/extras
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Here is a unique way to incorporate technology into your Earth Day Music Class. If time and/or materials are not permitting you to create instruments from recycled materials, let’s create a song about Earth Day that we can then add classroom instruments and rhythm patterns to perform.
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This play-along is challenging! The tempo is quick, there are a lot of chromatic notes, the rhythm has a lot of playing on the offbeats, and the play-along encourages one to look ahead when performing it. I would highly suggest slowing down the tempo on YouTube by clicking on the settings, choosing the “Playback speed” and slowing it down to 0.75 or 0.50.” Or use the “Transpose ▲▼ pitch ▹ speed ▹ loop for videos” Chrome extension that will allow you to change the pitch and key of most YouTube videos. In addition, I would use the screenshots/file found here in the blog post so that your students can practice this before trying it with the video.
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Turn your concert poster quickly and easily into a social media post!
Resizing in Canva has significantly improved, making it a more versatile and user-friendly tool for creators. With the enhanced resizing capabilities, users can effortlessly adjust their designs to fit different formats and dimensions without losing quality or layout integrity. This improvement is particularly beneficial for those who need to create consistent content across multiple platforms, such as social media, print, and web.
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With Earth Day next week, it is always important to keep the 3Rs in mind. In particular, we refer to the principles of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Jack Johnson's song of the same name is composed of two basic chords - C and G. The C chord is a great starting point for beginners on the ukulele. This song can be a valuable tool for students to learn G.
Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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BretPimentel.com is a goldmine for music educators, offering a variety of interactive resources. My favorites include the Random Note Picker for quick assessments, customizable Fingering Charts, and the versatile Note Generator for flashcards and composition activities. Check it out today to enhance your music classroom with these creative tools!
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🎶 Looking for Play-Along Videos for End-of-Year Songs in Your Music Class? 🎶
Whether you're prepping for graduation, a moving-up ceremony, or just want a fun way to end the year, I’ve got you covered! I’m creating easy-to-use play-along videos that your students will love—featuring ukulele and boomwhacker parts for "Time of Your Life" by Green Day. 🎸🎼
Bring some musical magic to your final lessons of the year!
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Check out a fresh ukulele play-along featuring Green Day's hit "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." The title has been slightly modified by omitting "Good Riddance." This rendition is from the 1998 Letterman Show when the album "Nimrod" was introduced. The performance is by Green Day's frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong. As it's a live version, it skips the initial part found on the CD, excluding a word unsuitable for an elementary music setting.
Teaching this song
This song is based on four chords: G Major, E Minor, D Major, and C Major. The teaching approach involves introducing one chord per class session. Read more below.
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Here comes April Fools. Lots of rickrolling, funny posts, and flutes purposely playing with cleaners in them! Bring it on!!
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