Episode 43 - Snowy Days, Winter Days - 5 Activities for January

 After years of seeing my music teacher friends teach like their hair's on fire, only to end up exhausted and frustrated, I thought my people need something so they don't have to write lesson plans from scratch. So I created the Storybook Spotlight Club, which you definitely should get. Included in every month's lesson plan is a themed storybook lesson of each month to save you hours of time and take the guesswork out of using storybooks in your classroom.

A movement lesson to go with it. A PowerPoint presentation to use to keep your students actively engaged. A video tutorial of how to use the lesson plan. and a once a month live Q and A with me to answer any questions or solve any challenges you might have had when you use this lesson plan. The best part, it's only nine bucks.

I mean, your Starbucks and a muffin costs more than that. So if you want to find out more about the Storybook Spotlight Club, go to storiesthatsing. net forward slash book club. See you there. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there.

Explore more podcasts at www. teachbetterpodcastnetwork. com. Now let's get onto the episode. Are

you an elementary music teacher? Who's frustrated and overwhelmed. I'm Jeanette Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching. Every day, but it wasn't long ago I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom. Winter is in full force, isn't it? I mean, If you are in January of 2024, then you know that we just had our first snow up north, and even here in Alabama, where I live, we are getting lots of cold weather, which is sort of random.

I mean, we usually have lots of fluctuation, but we have had tons and tons of cold nights, like in the 30s, in the high 20s, next week it's supposed to be in the teens. I mean It's winter. So I thought it would be good to do some snowy winter day activities. And these are great for kiddos who have a lot of snow, but they're also great for kiddos who don't have snow because it's kind of fun for them to, you know, just See the snow and listen to stories about the snow and all that good stuff.

So I have for you today five activities for January for the winter days for the snowy days and the first one I'm gonna put a link to my favorite video of I have a little snowman. Now you probably know this snowman song and you may even know this particular version. It's I have a little snowman with the do re mi scale and it's by visual musical minds and I have subscribed to their channel because it's really a pretty awesome Visual and, and it's, it's good singing and the whole deal.

So I'm going to link to that in the show notes. And what I like to do is I'm going to just play a little bit of this for you.

A nose, a mouth, a nice warm scarf of red. I put some buttons on his coat and I'm on his head. Watch him as he melts.

So this goes on with a Do Re Mi version, a solfege version, if you will. It goes on with another singing version with a woman singing, and then it goes into instrument play. And what I like to do, I am doing an entire month. of high and low and going up and down the scale and we are going to explore all the ways that you can do high and low and up and down the scale and my students should have a really really good handle on all of those activities by the time I'm done so I'm starting with this one and we listen to the song first and once we've listened to the song I have them use their snowflake hands, which are basically kind of like they look like jazz hands And I say we're going to flutter them up and then we're going to float them down and so I help them and I am their visual model as they're fluttering up up up up up and then we float the the snowflake hands down and they sit on their booties.

That's what I call it, their bootie. They love that. They're like, what's that? And then all of a sudden it hits them. Ah, it's your bottom. It's very funny. They love it. Um, so I say we're sitting on our booties. We are not moving anything but our hands and our arms and we stretch all the way up high and then we float down low.

Then I have them make their bodies into giant snowballs and I don't give any other directions than that. Just make your body into a nice round giant snowball and then we grow like the snowman. We start with the giant snowball, then we go to the medium sized snowball and then we go to the small snowball and we grow all the way up.

Then I play my glockenspiel and I play up. the scale and I played down the scale and we talk about how it goes from low to high, high to low. And then I tell them that I'm going to try and trick them and I'm going to change the tempo. I'm going to change, I call it the speed limit with my little ones.

And with my bigger kids, I say, change the tempo. And they all love it when you try to. Trick them, quote unquote, so I play up and down the scale and I change the tempo and they have to grow like snowman and float down like snowmen and sometimes it's fast and sometimes it's slow, etc, etc. So that's kind of fun.

And we talk about the glockenspiel. We talk about how to. Say it and we talk a little bit about it. Then I teach the small is high and big is low poem. Somebody long ago taught me small is high and big is low. And that is how our music rules go. And I put my own swing on it. So it goes like this. Small is high and big is low.

Small is high and big is low. Small is high and big is low. And that is how our music rules go. And I say the whole thing. Then I have the kids echo it, and then I have the kids say it while I'm doing it, I'm showing them a small instrument and a big instrument. So you might take your keys off your glockenspiel, your, your lowest and your highest.

You might use a drum and another drum, that sort of thing, but I'm showing them. So, or I used boom whackers and we did it that way. So. Small is high and then big is low. And so I show them the first time we echo the second time and the third time I show them and they have to say it. So then they really own which one is small and which one is big.

And that's the first time I've done that is this year. And it is working like a charm. Then we talk about boomwhackers and we play through the song and I call out the colors. So that is the activity that I'm using for I have a little snowman. The next activity is for The Biggest Best Snowman by Marjorie.

I don't know for sure how to pronounce her last name, but I think it's Collier or Cool yer? Cool yer? Hopefully, I'm pronouncing it correctly. So, this is what I like to do with any storybook. I like to first read it for delight. Let the students just enjoy the story. Now, this is kind of a longer story. So, It's good for, I would say you could use it up through second or third grade, probably third grade because it's longer.

For my pre K, I'm going to do a little bit of summarizing on some of the longer pages because there are certain things I want to use it for. So I'm going to read the story for delight, and then we're going to take a picture walkthrough, which is you page through and you, you look at each picture, and we're going to talk about how Nell is small, and then there's Big Mama, and Big this, and there's like, um, Big Sally, and I forget the other, um, maybe Big Tina, I don't know.

But every time I say the word big, I use my low voice for big. And I use my high voice for little Nell. So every time little Nell is talking, I use my high voice and we go back and forth between every time Nell is talking or they're talking about Nell, I say Nellie. I am small, but my T and then for big mama, big sisters, I go big, big, very big.

So you can kind of decide where you want to use those repeating patterns, or we could call them tiny rhythms. So you could decide where to use them. And then if you're doing any. grade, but pre K, you're going to show them different sizes of frame drums and you're going to show them, you're going to review that small is high and big is low poem and use it to describe the smallest and the largest frame drums.

And then you are going to pass out drums. As I'm passing out the drums, I'm telling them what they have. Small is high, small is high, big is low. So I tell them like that because they think it's so funny and silly and it's really good because then they're like totally focused on you. Um, and then we play through the storybook.

So every time it's little Nell, it's, I'm small but mighty. And we use just one finger to play that small drum. And. The big drums play big, big, big, big. And I say, show me your tapping fingers. And we tap and bounce right in the center of the drum. So that is a little bit about the story. The biggest best snowman and I will link to that in the show notes the next storybook I'm planning to use this month is called froggy gets stressed.

It's an oldie. It's by Jonathan London And again, you're gonna read the story for delight. And when you're reading words like ZOOP and ZOOP. I always make my voice go from low to high and of course There's a reason for that. So We're going to go through the whole story and I'm going to read all the words like that, all those kinds of words, and then we're going to take a picture walk through it when we're done, and I'm going to point out or have the students find all the places where Froggy is putting on his shoes and his cold weather gear, and that's where zups and all those things come in.

And we're going to, I'm going to read each word again, and I'm going to make my voice go from low to high. And I'm going to have the students echo each word. So it'll be like zoop, and they'll go zoop, like that. Zup, zup. And then I'm going to review that small is high and big is low poem. And we are going to go to the instrumentorium and we're going to first apply the poem to the ORF instruments.

Of course, you're going to review mallet hold. every single time you go to the instrumentarium because they will not remember. So my version is, I say, pinch, wrap, quack, quack, quack. Use your wings to flap, flap, flap, shake your ducky tail. And what I'm doing there is I'm pinching towards the middle of the mallets.

I'm wrapping my fingers around and I tell them to make sure they're wrapping and not squeezing. And then, We, I, I show them where the tail is because you know, the mallet has to have like about an inch at the bottom where you're not like you're wrapped so that you're not all the way down at the bottom.

Otherwise, I say to my students, your mallets are going to be floppy and you're not going to be able to control them. So we'll talk all about that and we'll do a little bit of hands together and alternating hands and then we'll put. That small is high, big is low poem on to the Orff instrument. So I'll start it and they'll just echo after me and they will, I'll model for them.

So it'll be like small is high and I'll play a tremolo on my smallest key and big is low. And I'll play a tremolo on my biggest key, my lowest key, etc. So then we're going to talk about how you play from low to high. You can decide, or your students and you can decide together, do you want to use a glissando, or do you want to do a walking up the instrument?

It is really up to you. So, zoop would make a really good glissando, or you can use, use walking up the instrument. I am not emphasizing rhythm here. I am purposefully emphasizing only low to high because you want to, with your littles especially, only one skill at a time, otherwise you are going to confuse them and they are never going to get any of it.

So you're gonna, you're gonna talk about that, you're gonna do zoop, and they're gonna do zoop, etc. Um, zup, and they're gonna do zup. And then you're going to read the story again, and the kids are going to play their instruments at the appropriate times of the story. So an extension would be, if you've got second and third graders, you could add one more skill, and that would be to play from high do to la, to the lower do, to the lower la, lower la, that's hard to say.

And um, Every time the mom is like, froggy, because she calls him all the time and you can have them play on the froggy part. So that's just a really fun story. And again, it's another one that focuses on. Low to high, high to low, that sort of thing. It actually focuses more on low to high. The next story is the snowman.

And this lesson plan is one that you can only get if you are a member of the Storybook Spotlight Club, which lives in my Happy Music Teacher Academy, and it is possible to join that at. Any time I will link to that in the show notes and you are able to join the Storybook Spotlight Club for just 9 a month with it you get the lesson plan, the PowerPoint, a video tutorial and This is not just any lesson plan.

It is a lesson plan that will carry you through at least three weeks. So I am basically writing your lesson plans for you for at least three weeks out of every month. So it's a really, really good value. So the snowman is by Raymond Briggs. And I'm going to do a little paging through this one. If you have ever seen the movie The Snowman, it's about 25 minutes long.

My students and I are going to watch it at the end of the month because we'll have done this activity, probably a good couple of activities from this book. So, On the first page, the little boy is getting dressed to go out in the snow. He sees that it's snowing and you can use some of those same zoop and zup as he, he's putting on his pants, he's putting on his sweater, et cetera, et cetera.

Then he goes out and he's building a snowman. So one thing that I do with the biggest best snowman is we do a A crescendo, a crescendo ing, is that a word? A crescendo ing drum roll for when they are rolling the snowball into a giant snowball. And so, this will extend into this next story and we can do that drum roll again.

I do not talk about crescendo with my littles, but I will, um, with like second and third grade, we'll talk about it. And I do it like this. Crescendo! And I, I, you know, just demonstrate it like that. They get to echo it, and then they're like, Oh, I know what that means. They already know what it means. So at any rate, he builds this whole snowman and we can go from low to high.

The ultimate goal of this story is that as he's building the snowman, you can go from low to high and you can talk again. About building the snowman you can act out the snowman all that good stuff as he's building the snowman There's also a portion Where in the last storybook that we just talked about the biggest best snowman Where we're doing a crescendo drum roll And I like to have the students do like, as the little girl rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls, and we do a drum roll and we get louder and louder.

And we talk about that, that I don't do this with Uh, kinder or first grade, but second and third, I would do crash and dough. And we would talk about what that means. And then we would talk about doing the crescendo as they're rolling. I'm turning the pages as they're rolling the ball, the, the ball, the snowball.

Um, so it would be a four measure crescendo for the largest snowball. Then for the medium size one, a. three measure and then for the small one for his head a two measure so you can do that as he is or or you can do like a tremolo on one of the keys if you're on the orf instruments then he gets up and he discovers that the snowman has come to life of course why would he not and the snowman walks you can do a walking heartbeat you can talk about how there's a part where Um, he's pulling out the paper towel roll and you can do like a, a little glissando back and forth up and down.

There's a part where he's squirting the water bottle. So all these different things. Then he gets dressed in the, um, the father's clothes and you can do like your zzzzzup and your zzup as he's. And of course you're going to play that low to high on the ORF instrument. And then he sits down to dinner. I mean, you can do like sitting.

High to low, standing back up, low to high, etc. And then he leaps into the air and he flies. So these are all really good. You get to pick the words that you want to use and you and your students are going to explore the ORF instruments based on that story. Again, there is a whole. lesson plan in my Storybook Spotlight Club, especially for you if you join.

The last activity that we're going to talk about is Tacky the Penguin, and Tacky the Penguin is by Helen Lester, and this is not my lesson plan. This is Denise Gagné's lesson plan, but it is included in my resource book. book, stories that sing, which I will link to in the show notes. You can find that on my website, stories that sing.

net forward slash shop. And this is all about tacky, the penguin. And there's some great vocal exploration in here because tacky is like, what's happening? And the. Goodly, lovely, angel, neatly, and perfect. Always greet each other quietly and politely. So you can do, hello, hello, hello. Um, then there's diving.

So you could do some orf exploration. Um, diving as opposed to splashy cannonballs, or you can get out your frame drums and you can dive in and, um, make a soft splash. And with the splashy cannonball, you can do a loud splash. Then there's thump, thump, thumping. So you can play the thump, thump, thumps on the drums.

Then there are the areas where the hunters go we're going to catch some pretty penguins and we'll march them with a switch and we'll sell them for a dollar and get rich rich rich and there is another one where the penguins talk about they sing penguins on the iceberg and then I'm just paging through and then there's an area where the penguin sings, how many toes does a fish have?

And you can do that to the drunken sailor. How many toes does a fish have? How many toes does a fish have? How many toes does a fish have? Tacky was an odd bird. I know I'm not in the right key there, but you get the idea. So there are lots of great vocal exploration opportunities in this storybook. There are lots of great drumming.

opportunities, and then there's also some literacy connections and some social skills connections in this lesson plan. So let's take a quick run through these lesson plans again. So we've got the teaching up and down and high and low to I have a little snowman. Then we have the storybook, The Biggest Best Snowman, by Marjorie Collier.

Then we have Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London. Again, lots of good low to high opportunities. We have The Snowman with lots of good just instrument exploration. Exploration, Orff Instrument Exploration, and then we have Vocal Exploration and some Drumming with Tacky the Penguin. If you got some great tips and tidbits that are going to help you become a happy music teacher, I would be so thankful if you'd leave me a review.

Thanks so much for your time. Well, that's all I have for you today. But before I go, let me remind you. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep being fabulous you.

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