The last few years have been the hardest in teaching, even harder than being a first year teacher! Hey, when you're young, you don't know what you don't know! After being shut down in March of 2020, teaching a wonderful Kindergarten class of 11 students in person in 2020-2021 year, and a rotation model of …
Take A Stand
I've shared a little song I wrote for our youngest students to help encourage and empower them to stand up against bullying behavior. Take a listen and share your feedback!
Wash Your Hands Sing Along Video
Playing Cups to Help With Rhythm Recognition
Students play a music game that focusing on creating, performing and responding.
RHYTHM ACTIVITIES for Younger Students
First graders use technology to practice rhythm creation and reading notation.
The Vocal Squiggle
Using art to create music, a piece of yarn a story and lots of imagination.
New Multimedia Standards in Massachusetts
A few ideas to dive into the 2019 arts standards in Massachusetts with a focus on multimedia and music.
Kindergartner’s Sing & Play
Kindergarten is a time where students are deeply immersed in early reading and decoding strategies. This can be supported by reading and writing music. Students in Kindergarten place quarter notes above the words of a song. There is no staff on the paper, just empty space above the lyrics. This gets them used to reading …
Color Coding Beginning Recorder
One of the first opportunities for students to experience reading standard music notation consistently is on the recorder. As I introduce it every year, I am trying to brainstorm ways to change large learning leaps into structured and scaffolded steps to access standard notation. One way I have attempted to bridge the leap from iconic …
Beginning Uke
Open tuning on the ukulele to work with younger kids is an approach to the instrument that has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. This approach is a way to get young kids to play familiar songs on the instrument in the first lesson. This method has a natural driving force because it supports quick …
Blake Siskavich 