It’s beginning to look a lot like…

That time of year when we are about to approach a holiday break and we need activities to quickly and intuitively use in a class of elementary music students. There have been so many wonderful contributions from numerous elementary music educators that I wanted to make this Wakelet so these activities were all in one place.

WHAT IS WAKELET?

Wakelet is a digital organizational platform that lets educators and students arrange and sort a mix of content, from videos to articles, to tweets, to Flip videos, to Google Drive, to OneDrive, to images, to texts, for easy access.

SOME WAKELET TIPS:

Tip 1: Wakelet will play YouTube videos inside of its platform with no advertisements or having to leave Wakelet. Just click the full-screen icon for the video to appear fully on the screen.

Tip 2: When using this Wakelet, please view the video or activity before using it in your classroom. I included a variety of activities and videos found by many amazing music educators. However, just because the activity works well with their students in their classrooms, does not mean it will work well with your students in your classroom. You will have to look over the activity and decide if it is appropriate for your classroom.

Categories

The categories for this Wakelet are:

• Winter Rhythm and Body Percussion Play-Along Videos

• Holiday Rhythm Play-Along Videos

• Holiday Body Percussion Videos

• Winter and Holiday Games

• Holiday Movement Songs

• Holiday Ukulele, Orff, and Recorder Play-Along

• Winter Boomwhacker Play-Along Videos

• Holiday Boomwhacker Play-Along Videos

• Nutcracker Activities

• Kwanzaa Resources

• Teachers Pay Teachers

The winter activities have no holidays attached to them. They include play-along videos or games to such songs as Let It Snow or Vivaldi’s Winter Movement. The Holiday Categories include rhythm, boomwhacker, ukulele, recorder, and Orff play-along videos that celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah. They also include popular YouTube channels such as Mr. Henry’s Music World, Swick’s Classroom, NewNew Channel, Mr. DelGaudio, Music with Mrs. Gibb, Music with Brielle, and my YouTube channel. I created a category with numerous Kwanzaa resources found in Music Ed with Missy’s Facebook group. The final category of Teachers Pay Teachers has some holiday activities from popular contributors.

Highlights from Each Category

Here are some highlights from each category.

Winter Rhythm and Body Percussion Play-Along Videos

In this category, check out Mr. Henry’s Winter Rap which includes body movements as well as basic rhythm reading and performing. Or Music with Mrs. Gibb’s Winter Beat Street which has the students helping the snowman travel to the steady beat down the street to get to the hill to go sledding. There are also some Vivaldi’s Winter play-along videos. Couple these Vivladi rhythm reading activities with the art teacher to collaborate with teaching Vivaldi’s Four Seasons where they learn about the season, they draw and paint about the season while listening to Vivaldi, and then finish with practicing reading and performing rhythms to the movements. Plus, the Netflix “Wednesday” series has brought back Vivaldi’s Winter as many students will recognize it from that show.

A tip: With Vivaldi’s play-along video shown below, remind the students that they begin their rhythm when the box touches the instrument box.

Holiday Rhythm Play-Along Videos

There is a lot to choose from in this category that musically celebrates Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years. Some highlights are my boomwhacker and rhythm play-along of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve/Sarajevo, which features the Ukrainian Carol of the Bells. I adore Aileen Miracle’s play-along video to Auld Lang Syne. She includes sixteenth notes and patterns which will be wonderful for your older elementary students. Plus, there are a few Hanukkah play-along videos and a Scrooge medley from Mr. Henry.

Holiday Body Percussion Videos

Get your students moving as they have a lot of extra energy coming up for the holiday. A couple of highlights are Mrs. Gottschall’s Christmas Vacation Body Percussion Play-Along and Therese Myers’s Sleigh Ride Body Percussion Play-Along.

Winter and Holiday Games

These are great activities to use for that day before the break and your concert, informance, etc., is finished. One that stands out is Katie Wardrobe’s Midnight Music’s Emoji Holiday Song Quiz. A few years back, there was a Facebook Group post where we were trying to guess the song by only using emojis instead of words. Many of us decided to try this with our students and they loved it because they continuously converse and text with emojis. Also, check out her Holiday Song Maker Activities.

The other activity that stands out is Mr. Henry’s Holiday Edition of his Four Corners Game Show! Just follow along with the instructions and your students will love this. If you can use holiday songs in your music classroom, this game will be a hit!

Holiday Movement Songs

There are some wonderful movement activities as well as Dancing Freeze/Statue in the Park games. One movement activity I would like to highlight is Music with Mrs. Dunc’s Everybody Sing (Jingle Jangle) Instrument Play Along & Dance. If you are looking for an alternative to Jingle Bells, this song is a great choice.

Remaining Categories

This Wakelet has so many wonderful activities that this post will become too long trying to give more highlights. Use the categories to assist you in what you are looking for or as filters so you can focus on a few that will work this week before the holiday break. If you are teaching about the Nutcracker, I highly recommend looking at that category so you can bring in more activities that are interactive and give higher-order thinking skills to enhance the story or a video that you might be showing in your class.

The Kwanzaa resources come from a post in Music Ed with Missy’s Facebook group.

Finally, there is the Teachers Pay Teachers category to explore music educators’ created resources, worksheets, activities, and more, for this holiday and winter season.

Coming Next!

This past week I finished up with three very successful concerts. One was our band concert with our Grades 4-8 Philharmonic, the Grades 5-8 Jazz Band, and the 5th Grade Instrument Class. We then had our Preschool Holiday Concert which went very well as with the various ages groups of 2-5, my goals were that they could stand up and sing to memorize and sing songs with motions and their 5 voices. Our final concert was Grades K-8 coming back together after three years to perform. Alumni join us for the final song of the concert and I held back tears seeing so many wonderful alumni singing together again. It was pure joy.

Over the break, I will be counting down to the New Year with a daily tech tip for elementary and middle school general music beginning on 12/23. It will be a ten-day countdown leading to 2023. The tech tip videos will be short and will culminate with one large video at the end with all of the tech tips. Please subscribe to my channel so you can get notifications of when the videos come out and can catch them daily or at the end.

I wish you all a wonderful, safe, and peaceful holiday break!