Musical Chairs, Art, and Literature

We have been finishing up our unit on fairy tales.  Towards the end we read The Magic Flute, a fairy tale in opera form.   I play the flute and got to see this opera once, so it was fun to tie it in to fairy tales.

One of my favorite activities combines musical chairs and art.  Students wandered from desk to desk, listening to music from, The Magic Flute.  When the music stopped we listened again and drew the music.

After a few rounds of musical chairs we returned to the picture at our seat and traced the lines with a white crayon.  Magic occurs when you use water color over the whole paper...kids reactions to crayon resists cracks me up.

Finally, we thought about the story and tried to think of one image that could be a symbol for the Opera.   We drew the symbol onto black paper and added it to our backgrounds.

I am not digging the look of the final product for this project, but I do love the thought that students put into and how much we all loved the Opera story!

And I also thought I would share an art project from my friend's class down the hall.  Lots of different media and I don't know all the steps...but they turned out really fun.

Notice room for air conditioner....

Oh, man. I am in the dungeon.

Help!  We don't like the food!

Happy Tuesday,

Music and Books

Before I join up with the music linky party, I have to share one of the most helpful websites.  Read Kiddo Read, thanks to my friend Sarah, who pinned it for me to find.  It has books sorted by age and then by genre....pretty straight forward and not as exciting as this part....

click the picture....I dare you!

 




The whole list is books geared to boy readers (although I added a bunch of them to my TBR pile)  It is separated by age as well, and give a short description of the book.  All ideas for boy readers make me happy.

Now onto the music linky over at Teaching Maddeness.  I love music, but don't really listen to music that my students are into.....why they don't love Wicked and other musical soundtracks is beyond me:-)  Anyway I am loving what all of you have been posting.  Here are a couple of our favorite songs from last year.
I'm Elmo and I Know It (for obvious reasons, we didn't listen to the original version)

The Skeleton Dance--we loved imitating the skeleton

The other way we use music in the classroom is when we start the day.  At the beginning of the year, I ask my students to bring in a cd with their favorite song, or I look for it on itunes.  (I check lyrics and language ahead of time)  Then I put all the songs into one playlist.  Whoever the student of the day is, we play and listen to their song.  Some of their song choices crack me up and when I hear their song on the radio, or in other places, I immediately think of that student.  


And of course during reading, writing, and art, we play quiet background classical music.  Some of my favorite classical cds.

One of my all time FAVORITE composers!

because the flute is my talent

and some brass...

...