Episode 56 - 7 Musical Moves: Energizing Your Elementary Classroom

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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. How are things? Things. Things in my classroom are pretty good this week.

We're done with our testing, through with the testing, but you know, random behaviors are happening today. I had to call the office to come and get a first grader. A first grader. I mean seriously, he has been sort of random all year and last week he was amazing and I was like oh my gosh maybe we've turned a corner and this week he was right back to his old shenanigans so I did have to call the office on him but otherwise we are having just a lovely and wonderful time in the music classroom.

This is move more month. Did you know that? April is move more month and I thought it might be fun. We haven't done a movement style podcast where I talk to you about how to add more movement to your classroom since episode, I think it's 13. So it is long past due And I have some kind of traditional and then some non traditional movement activities.

I have seven of them for you today, and I'm super excited to talk to you more about them. But before I do that, I wanted to just give you some thoughts about movement and how it will help your kiddos because movement is like part of the problem in my kindergarten classes right now is we're working on a program and You know what happens then you are not able to do as much movement as much, you know, all the things that you normally get to do that make music class so much fun.

We're not getting out too many instruments, all that good stuff. So You know, it, it's been a little bit challenging to say the least. And I think that's part of the problem is we aren't doing as much movement. And I've been breaking my own rule. And my own rule is that we need to add movement to every single class.

At least once, sometimes twice. So you probably know this about me if you've been following me for a while, or you've been listening to this podcast for a while, whatever, but exercise is a passion for me. It is something that I need to do. I didn't feel super great this morning. I think I might be getting a cold.

So I didn't do any exercise this morning and I'm going to tell you, I came in cranky. I came in tired. I was not as alive and refreshed and renewed as I normally am. And believe it or not, even on a Monday morning, I'm usually, which is when I'm recording this podcast, I'm usually in a pretty good place, but that's because I do about 45 to 50 minutes of exercise before I start my day.

It is the way I start my day. And at this point. Less than 25 percent of students are doing, children are doing any kind of daily physical activity. So when I was growing up and I was actually just talking to, I went to the dermatologist today and we were, she and I, the, the nurse and I were talking about just You know how we got chased outside and my mom and dad were like, don't come back till dinner.

And, you know, we would do bike riding and racing and all kinds of fun things. And childhood stress has really increased in the last couple of decades. And at least 40 percent of kids are feeling very stressed out and very worried. And. This is my opinion, but I think part of it is because they're not getting enough exercise because if you exercise regularly, you know that when you're not exercising, you start to get more stressed out and more overwhelmed and It really like, exercise leads to this amazing sense of well being.

It releases all these amazing good endorphins that you don't normally have. And it also affects your sleep patterns positively or negatively. So I can tell you that on spring break, for some reason I didn't do as much exercise as I normally do. It's a long story, but I was back and forth doing some traveling, la la la.

Bye. And it totally affected my sleeping. Like I totally had a problem with sleeping, getting to sleep, staying asleep, the whole deal. So, and then of course that affects your mood the next day. So it is really important for you to get exercise. Even if you're doing things like parking far away in the parking lot or taking the stairs, like I was in the airport yesterday and I took the stairs up and down instead of the escalator and I was in the Baltimore airport at BWI and they have those cool moving sidewalks and I was like, uh, I'm not using those moving sidewalks because I needed to get some exercise because, you know, I was going to be sitting on a plane for a couple of hours.

So, I feel like the only thing that's more important When you're teaching anything, for us especially, is SteadyBeat. That is the only thing that is more important. So, if you're not adding movement for every student, every single week, you are doing a disservice to your students. Yes to them, but also to yourself, because the more movement they get, the better off they're going to be.

So I'm going to give you my bonus right now. And the bonus is if your kiddos come in and they are like extra random, extra wiggly jiggly, then I always will be like, Oh, let's go ahead and start with some movement. So I'll just put on some fun song and. We will just do some movement. I've got a playlist that I'm working on that has all this happy, good music that, that is fun for students to listen to and you know, it's clean.

And when I'm done with that, I'm not done with it yet, but you know what? I'll go ahead and share the playlist with you in the show notes and then you can have it to work with. So what I do is, uh, they will stand up. I have them spread out just a little bit and we do most things in place. Every once in a while, we'll do something where we're walking back and forth or something, but we are doing like, keep the steady beat.

We'll keep the steady beat on her head. We'll keep the steady beat on our shoulders. We'll clap the steady beat. We'll pat the steady beat. We'll walk the steady beat. We'll do like a walk, like the Egyptian steady beat. We'll do a wiggle walk to the steady beat. We will just. And I am not doing anything that is well thought out.

This is just me making it up. Then I'll have some student leaders. Once you have done this three or four or five times, then they have a really good idea of what they can do. You don't want to do this the very first time, because A lot of them will be like, I don't know what to do. So, you know, make it three, four or five times.

And then you pick student leaders and you say, okay, we're going to, we're going to follow Joshua now, and now we're going to follow sit lolly and, you know, and they get to do their movement for, you know, maybe four measures or. Eight measures or something like that. So, and put some rules in place. You're not allowed to do anything too fast.

You're not allowed to do anything where you're getting up and down off the floor. Cause otherwise, you know, somebody is going to be doing the snake or, you know, something else, rolling somersaults or whatever they have to stay standing or they have to stay sitting, whatever. I totally recommend standing.

And then. You know, they get to do the leading of the movement and it can be anything. So that is my bonus is if someone comes in, if a class comes in and they're like totally needing some movement, you can see it, Hey, give them some movement. Especially testing time is a great time to do that. Hopefully you're through testing by now, but if you're not.

Then make sure that you start your day with that little extra movement and activity. And it can be like two to three minutes. I mean, no more than that. It should not interrupt your day. It should just be like something fun to do that's really easy. So that being said, now that you understand how important it is to add some movement, Let us get started with some easy to do things to add movement to your day.

So I love to do animal movement. So what I like to do is if I have done, like, for example, a couple of weeks ago, we were doing this storybook, Honeybee and the Robber, and we were moving like bumblebees. So the way that I introduced that is I always will say to them, I wonder what would happen if you were a bumblebee?

What would your head look like? Where would your stinger be? Show me your stinger. Show me your tiny little wings. Show me how fast

I love to do animal movement. We did a storybook this past week that was, there, there was bunny hopping.

We did some movement like a hummingbird. We did bat movement. And that was so much fun. And what I'll do is I'll put on some music. Like just, I search up instrumental music. This one I did like happy instrumental music. And we just moved. If like one time, Um, recently I had, we were doing deep in the swamp and so I searched up some folk music with a banjo and, or you could even search up instrumental swamp music or instrumental folk music or something like that.

And. You get to tell the students, I like to have my pages, I'll show my page and I'll be like, okay, we're going to, we're going to move like that animal. So that is a really good way to start out any time. You are doing a song that has animals in it, or you're doing a storybook that has animals, anything like that.

Number two, rhythm relay races. So what you do in this case is you're going to divide your students up into teams and you're going to set up a relay race. Where they pass a rhythmic pattern to each other using body percussion or small instruments. So, and they have to do it the same to each other, like they, they have to echo back and forth.

So, I, I think that, Probably I said small instruments, but that might be kind of hard to do. I mean, if you have a whole bunch of egg shakers and you want everybody to have an egg shaker, you could totally do that. But for example, they could, now this is probably more of a bigger kids. I would say third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade.

So, um, someone claps T T T T T T. You can do it using the rhythm syllables, or you can just have them clap. And. Or you could have them read the rhythm. So it really is up to you how you do it. So they, they get to pass the rhythmic pattern to each other and they go to the end. And whoever's finished first gets to um, win.

So that one is kind of fun. If you have questions about that one, do feel free to reach out and ask me questions. Number three. Interactive storytelling. So, I love to create musical stories where the students are going to act out different characters or they'll do movements based on what's going on. So, for example, you could say, there once was a kitten and the kitten climbed up the tree.

And all the students get to climb up the tree. And then the kitten crawled out to the very edge of the branch. And you crawl out slowly to the edge of the branch. And the kitten was so scared, and he backed up, away from the edge, and when he was backing up, he fell down right into a bed of leaves. So you get the idea.

Now, I literally just made that up on the spot. And that is a good way to not only practice, going up and down and practice your levels if you are or if you understand what if you are an orf teacher you understand what i'm talking about there practice your levels it is also a great way for students to practice things like up and down and beside and behind you could say the kitten found a friend and sneaked behind the friend and then they decided they were going to play hide and seek so the kitten hid from From her friend, blah, blah, blah.

You get the idea. So that is a really fun way to get them working on their creativity. To get them working on doing some like beside, behind, up, down, all of those. really important skills that they need to work on anyway, and then they're also getting some movements. So that is another really good possibility.

Number four, obstacle course rhythms. Now this isn't a random one, right? So you can create an obstacle course with stations. So students have to perform different rhythm patterns or different movements. Before moving on to the next station, so you could have, for example. do 10 jumping jacks and at the next station, they might have to do stomp, stomp, pat, clap, stomp, stomp, pat, clap.

And at the next station, they might have to wiggle for 16 beats. So again, I would say this would be good for second through fifth grade and you could create a whole obstacle course right now. You would want to have some music playing so they have a steady beat going on, or you might want to play your claves or your tick tock blocks or something like that, something so that they have a steady beat going on and you give them, you want to give them a very structured, Deal.

So you would be like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3. So make sure that you give them, let's say you're giving them four measures in a meter of four and they, you're going to count those four measures for them and then you're going to tell them to switch. You want to, if you're going to do something like this, you want to make sure they know which way to go next or have your stations labeled, something like that.

And then you want to talk about how to move to the station. So it might be fun if they were wiggle walking to continue wiggle walking to the next station. Or you might want to have like a verbal cue like move down, move down, everybody move down and everybody moves to the next station. Number five. I love to do this.

This is dramatic movement interpretation. So you can play a certain kind of music and maybe it's a kind of music that's very powerful, like the William Tell Overture or something like that, and have them just do some interpretive movement, interpretive dance, something like that, and they get to just act out the emotions the way that they perceive it.

Or you might want to, especially for your bigger kids, you may want to give them scarves or streamers or something like that because then they're playing with something and they won't be so self conscious about, Oh my gosh, I'm moving. Is anybody looking at me, et cetera, et cetera. So I love to do this type of thing.

You can do something very dramatic and then you could do something really slow and flowy. And then you could do something fast and staccato. So you want to just give them. a couple of different options and again, two and a half, three minutes worth where they get to just do some dramatic movement, some interpretive dance or movement, that sort of thing.

Number six, a marching band parade. So you can organize a classroom parade where the students get to march around the room playing certain rhythms on their instruments or singing a chant or Or, you know, doing something like that, you could have them also where they're a marching band and maybe give each, this is a great idea for if you're doing a, an instrument families of the orchestra unit.

Where one person gets the trumpet and one person gets the violin and what, you know, or like there's a string family of violins and violas, cellos, whatever, and they can march around and they can play their instrument as they're marching. You can choose some really good marching band music or some orchestra music and have them do a parade.

That is another really fun thing to do. Number seven, musical balloon volleyball. So I love to do things with music and this may be fun, or you might be wanting to do it with scarves, or you might want to do it with bouncy balls, something like that, where the students get to. bat the, bat the scarf or the balloon, or, you know, you can, you can do something else and they can use their hands or they can use a paddle of some sort and they can do this while they're singing or while they're chanting rhythmic patterns.

So for example, this might be something fun to do with jump rope songs. So they, they have to pat back and forth to the steady beat and. That is definitely a skill that would be more for older kids. And so I'm going to give you an option for younger kids as well. But they're, they're just patting these things back and forth using the steady beat.

And they're doing a chant like engine engine, number nine, going down Chicago line, you know, whatever, whatever you want to do. The option for littles would be a giant floor rhythm. So for example, let's say that you're working on quarter notes and double eighth notes. You can scatter quarter notes and double eighth notes all over the floor and they have to jump to a certain place or hop to a certain place.

You want to tape them down. And this might be kind of a fun thing to play outside to where you can do maybe sidewalk chalk and draw some things. And so you could have them, um, okay. jump to a quarter note, jump to a double eighth note, jump to a quarter note, you know, and they have to jump to the closest quarter note or double eighth note or half note or something like that.

So that might be kind of a fun thing to do. You could also do something where you blew up some instruments and you said, okay, jump to a maraca, jump to a drum, you know, that kind of thing. So instrument identification. for your littles. This would also work really well for your bigger kids. And finally, instrumental body painting.

So, you are going to get some washable paint, and you're going to have your students use their bodies as the brushes, and And they're going to create rhythmic patterns or designs on a large sheet of paper or canvas while they're listening to the music. So for example, if you had something fast, you could have them.

And, and when we say bodies, we're talking like. Hands or elbows or, you know, feet, that sort of thing. So that is kind of a random and weird one, but I think it's really fun. And you can have your students sort of like, let's say there's a fast part and you have them designed to the fast part. And then there's the slow part.

So, you know, some of the classical music that has the fast and slow parts. Think maybe a Hungarian, one of the Hungarian waltzes or something like that. I will link to that in the show notes. Let's go back and do a quick review of all of the movement activities that I talked about. Number one, the animal movement.

songs where they are moving like different animals to music. Number two, rhythm relay races. You divide the students up into teams. They are passing a rhythm back and forth to each other, a body percussion, that sort of thing. Number three, interactive storytelling, where you make up a story and you have them act out different characters or different movement.

based on your story. Number four, obstacle course rhythms. You're going to create that obstacle course with the stations. They're going to play different rhythm patterns or do different movements, different body percussions, that sort of thing. Number five, dramatic movement interpretation. So you're going to play different types of music and they are going to do interpretive movement or interpretive dance based on the music.

Number five, The marching band parade. Number six, the musical balloon volleyball or the bouncy ball, that sort of thing. Number seven. Instrumental body painting and I'm going to give you one more good bonus and that is have your students if you're playing instruments and you can set up your instruments in like a circle or like I have squares where on my carpet has squares and today we were doing Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day and I had them move like okay Purple moved to red, red moved to green, green moved to blue, and so they each moved over one, and then the purple had to, sorry, the purple had to go all the way around to red, and the red was on the opposite end of the carpet.

So, they were getting a little bit of extra movement even though they were playing instruments. So, there are lots and lots of good ways to incorporate movement into your classroom, and, um, yeah. in just, just easy ways to include more movement. 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.