arts integration in November

playing my song

You’ll need a piano, keyboard, xylophone (like in the picture) or glockenspiel (small, even a toy one will work).
Make 7 sentences beginning Thank you….(try to fit it in 4 beats but if you’re not a musician, don’t worry, it will still work. Start on C (the white key to the left of 2 black keys. On C (marked on a xylophone), tap out your first “thank you phrase” and tap and sing the words of each syllable. Then move to the next key or bar and tap and sing the syllables of your 2nd “thank you phrase.” Keep moving to the right until you have placed one phrase on B or the 7th bar. Now go to the next highest bar (to the right) which is high C. Now you go to the left (descending in pitch) and tap once on each bar fitting it to your 8th sentence or phrase. Something like: Thank you God for all I have now. If you create a final line with 8 syllables, you’ll end up on the bar or key that you started on.
This lesson integrates language arts with music. Enjoy:)

Arts integration activity for November

Create a gratitude quilt, integrating art and language arts as well as character building.
As you can see, in my example, I cut up different pieces of colored and printed paper, put my gratitude lists into categories, like family and church and listed the things that I was grateful for on each piece either before or after you piece together and paste your quilt.  Each piece has a list of things from our gratitude list based on the category it’s in.  If you click on mine, you can get a bigger picture and look at my categories.  See if you can guess what the categories are.

Pumpkin Stew

October is the perfect month to teach this lesson.  The objective in music is playing an ascending melodic pattern with steps and skips.  The objective in “reading” is reading the ingredients that the children decide to put into their “pumpkin stew.”  I use a Halloween cauldron and index cards.  The students make suggestions for ingredients that are written on an index card and put into the cauldron.  Someone stirs while we play “pumpkin stew.”  D F G (pumpkin stew), D F G  (pumpkin stew)  then tap on rhythm sticks.  What (ta) shall we (ti-ti) put (ta) in the (ti-ti) pumpkin stew (ta, ta ta rest. )  Every time an ingredient is added, we chop it up with our rhythm sticks to the following rhyme  Chop, chop, chippity, chop.  Cut off the bottom and cut off the top.  What we have left we put in the pot.  Chop, chop, chippity, chop.  At the end of the lesson, I pull the cards out of the cauldron and randomly call on students to read the ingredient.  Have fun!

“Autumn” by Vivaldi

This time of year, I always taught my primary grades my original words to this selection. It’s easy to do .. and the words are simple:
“Autumn by Vivaldi, it’s autumn by Vivaldi,
The leaves are falling down, (repeat) and end with “the leaves are falling down. I would take laminated autumn leaves and write words on them i.e. soft, loud, fast, and slow, throw them up and pick a child randomly to read their card and then we would all sing the song again following the directions of that word. Have fun!

1st book finished

Still teaching the arts and with the arts

It’s amazing what rest, healthy diet, great doctors, exercise and way less stress can do for you.

I’m now officially retired from the public school system but I’ve had years of training in using the arts to teach other subjects.  So I hope to keep this site open and if you would like to drop a comment about your interest in using the “arts i.e. music, visual art, drama, dance” to teach any subject, feel free.  I would love to hear from you.

I’m currently teaching private piano lessons, and working on Christian music and books.

On sick leave.

I’m on sick leave for the rest of the school year and I don’t know if I will be returning to my arts integration school.  I have applied for disability retirement but it hasn’t been reviewed yet and is certainly not official.  However,  if I don’t return, I’m still a huge supporter and advocate for  ”arts integration.”  You can explore this site to find a great definition for “arts integration.”  I plan to keep the blog and can add a few things periodically until I’m feeling much better and then I would like to provide this place for ideas for teachers and home schoolers.  When I’m doing better, I’ll add an e-mail for contacting me but now, I’m just trying to work on my health.

Classical/Popular

What do you hear?

Having fun just adding audio to previous entries but also putting together a new C.D. and form for my first grades study of “classical” (in the general sense) and popular music.  The students will place their finger on the icon to indicate what they hear i.e. classical or popular.  I made the C.D. from my music library and from new pieces from itunes.  For example, when I typed in solo lute music, I got the piece that I used for the lute.  I used Jimmy Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” solo for electric guitar.  For groups, I used a Mozart orchestral piece for the orchestra and a Beatle tune for the popular band.  I was able to use a recording of Bach Inventions for the classical harpsichord and a Mario Brothers theme for the synthesizer.  I used the popular Justin Bieber vs an opera singer etc.  I used all clip art so as not to infringe on images.  This should be fun!file:///Users/FranBeatty/Desktop/mail.jpeg

Teachers work at home.

Check out the “Clouds” and the “Darkling Beetle” lessons.  I’ve added the students’ music to the blog.  Click on the word over the first picture to hear our creative endeavors:)

Winter Break

I’ll be using “Digital Performer” and a Firestudio mobile to finally put some of my students music with the projects shown here.  Winter break will give me some time to finally do that.  Looking forward to that.