Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Do You Wanna Build a Snowman???

Some of you may remember that I sometimes like to incorporate pop culture or pop music into my classroom just a little bit.  My next two posts will be examples of this.  Both are simple ways to incorporate popular movies, songs or you-tube videos while still ensuring that your students are learning only the best music.  Today's post features the movie FROZEN.  Next post will be focused on "What does the Fox Say??"

Does your school have Frozen Fever?? (Kind of an oxymoron isn't it???).  My elementary students LOVE that movie (and much of the staff too) so I decided to make a fun, interactive, bulletin board centered around a line/ song from the move- Do You Wanna Build a Snowman??  Of course it features the characters from the movie, but only as pictures- that's as far as the reference goes.


The game is a matching game where students have to match the Title, Rhythm, and Melody of a song to make a complete snowman.  We have a big version on the bulletin board for class work, as well as individual packets for group work.  Each grade has AT LEAST 5 songs to match up based on the toneset and rhythm patterns they already know. Check out the TPT files: Snowman, and also Jack-o-lanterns!  You can post 2 of the snowballs and have students find the one that is missing, OR just post one and have them find the 2 others that match the song chosen.
Ex. of song you can get from TPT to make your own set! 

The title of the song is on head of the snowman, the rhythm is on the 1st part of the body written in stick notation, and the melody is on the 2nd, biggest part of the body written solfa notation.  This door open for an extension of students having to translate the rhythm and solfa into staff notation on a dry erase board or worksheet, etc.

To keep the snowmen body parts in the right spots, each grade has a pocket on the bulletin board to keep their snowmen in so that no one gets confused and pieces don't get lost.

As a class we can all work together, using the different snowman body parts as flashcards to match the songs up correctly.  In stations, or group work, you can time students and see who matches the most songs correctly in a short period of time (5 minutes or so) OR have them focus on just one or two songs.

My students really enjoy this activity- especially when we are in stations and I challenge them to see which group can match the most songs.   They also like that this one, albeit very loosely, is connected to a new favorite movie.

I have also developed a Music Vocab matching game as well as an Instruments of the Orchestra version!  Students match the picture, to the word, to the definition or instrument family.  SO FUN!
There are a lot of version of each of these games!  Check out the links below!

Music Vocab: TPT Vocab Stack Games
Orchestral Instruments: TPT Instrument Stack Games



Stay warm and don't forget to add me as a favorite seller on TPT!  Many more items will be coming your way very soon.