May 23, 2025 | Activities, Teachers
Here’s a creative spring shaker activity from Module 3 of the Big Kids Make Music curriculum that’s perfect for 3-6 year olds!
What’s needed:
- Plastic Easter eggs are filled for pairs (or for small groups of children if a large class) to be discovered!
- Fill eggs with small items like pennies, paper clips, rice, beans, small stones, seeds, walnut in shell, etc.
- Colored tape secures the contents and adds additional color.
Take a look in your kitchen, office and outdoors to create a variety of sounds by making each pair or group of eggs with their own very distinctive sound. Students squeal with joy when they find who has a sound just like theirs!
Tip: When they need to be very quiet, (to be sure all have found the correct matches!) have the children create a cozy little nest with their hands, and have the egg lay quietly in the nest, even cover it so it stays warm! For the first verse, dance with your colored egg. For the second verse, shake and shake and listen for one like you!
Here’s a few children enjoying the activity.
For more playful learning and engaging musical action with shaker eggs….join me for 3 exciting days of PD this summer! (Returning teachers, including online training, students, and recent graduates pay only half tuition when you come to Redondo Beach the end of June!)
May 23, 2025 | Activities, Teachers
Vivaldi’s Spring, from The Four Seasons, will inspire this active listening lesson. This download includes printable cards, PowerPoint, lesson options, ideas for props, and a listening map.
Big thanks to Eric Young for the assistance and listening map. This is now one of the hundreds of free downloads in Music Box, which is included with all lesson plans, recordings and activity videos in Music Rhapsody Membership.
Hope to see you for one of the Summer PDs!
Aug 13, 2024 | Activities
Happy spring! Enjoy this playlist of visuals and activity ideas about April showers bringing growth, abundance, and a superbloom of May flowers.
Aug 13, 2024 | Activities
Making a rain stick is easy and a bouquet of flowers (rainbow streamers!) is quick and simple! Here’s how easy the streamers are to make:
Gather your old, frayed scarves. This is the only thing you need!
1. Pull on both sides of the tear on your used fraying scarves to make the strips of fabric.
2. Line up the long narrow strips of fabric in assorted colors.
3. Knot the strips on one end (this is what the children “hide” in their hands).
At the end of this video, you see us using the streamers to Carmina Burana, activity from my book/CD Kids Can Listen, Kids Can Move.
Here’s a video playlist of activities that are enhanced by the use of rainsticks and rainbow streamers. The first video is how to make the rainstick.
Here are two more songs that are great with rainbow streamers:
Aug 13, 2024 | Activities
“Who’s that tapping? Who’s that scratching?”
From our toddlers, preschoolers, and K-2, everyone loves singing “Who’s That Hatching” and playing with their hatching babies! Each child picks a baby animal for the game, and depending on the age of the class, children use ribbed rhythm sticks, tone blocks, or Orff instruments to accompany. Grade 1-2 has fun creating their “egg” rhythms with the babies tapping their way out of the shells!
Take a peek at a clip from one of my Live Teacher Trainings for a lesson on “Who’s That Hatching?”. In this video, half of the class plays Orff instruments while the others sing for the babies. The other half of teachers listen, then match their pitches.
We have so many hatching animal puppets in the Music Rhapsody Store! You can also make your own with the pattern on page 58 of the In All Kinds of Weather, Kids Make Music Book and CD.
Please note: We just learned my books with Alfred Publishing will be increasing in price soon. If you don’t have these yet, check out the Book Pack Special for the best value.
