Category Archives: MusicplayOnline Units

Dance Unit

The newest unit at www.Musicplayonline.com is a dance unit. (Resources are also available as print/disk or download!)

Start by logging into your MusicplayOnline account and head over to the Units section. When you click on the button you’ll see Festivals & Holidays is the default unit.

At the top of the page you’ll see four large buttons: Dance, Festivals & Holidays, Instruments, and Theory. Click on Dance to go to the dance section.

This section is organized by grades. At the top you’ll see four tabs: PreK- Kindergarten, Grade 1-2, Grade 3-4, and Grade 5-6. Each section has three different types of activities: Choreographed dances, movement activities, and creative movement activities.

We’ve organized all the choreographed dances from the
Musicplay program into these two boxes. You’ll see Grade 3 Dances in the left box and Grade 4 Dances in the right box. Don’t hesitate to try a dance in a higher or lower grade!

Click on a dance title and the link will bring you right to the song so that you can view the kids demo and the teacher instructions.

Choose Notation or Lyrics to teach the students to sing the song.

The Kids demo is valuable to help you teach the movements.

Dance Directions are in the song activities:

Form a single circle, boy-girl, boy-girl or with pairs of students. All the students join hands and perform the first two verses as the words suggest—circle right, then circle left……

The Dance Unit includes a few selections from other Themes publications. You’ll find Hunt the Cows, Danish Dance of Greeting, Kinderpolka, and La Raspa from our popular Primary Dances and Singing Games collection. If you like these, you can find 20 more dances in Primary Dances and Singing Games!

Hunt the Cows	Danish Dance of Greeting	Kinderpolka

The Unit also includes three selections from our new Super Fun Folk Dance collection: Seven Jumps, Sasha, and Chimes of Dunkirk. The recordings for these dances was done with authentic instruments and are wonderful! You can find eight more dances in the book Super Fun Folk Dance!


Kids demos make the dances easy to teach!	Projectable directions with embedded audio are really helpful when you’re teaching the dances.	Download a PDF with the directions.	You can find these dances and eight more in the book Super Fun Folk Dance!

For all of these dances, you’ll see the kids demo, a teaching slide with audio, a teacher’s guide PDF, and a link to the product to use offline. You can order the product as a printed book/disk or a download.

If you scroll down a little farther you will see Movement activities and Creative Movement Activities. Movement activities are primarily singing games with movement options. In Grade 4, we’ve included Pizza Pizza (street game), J’entends le moulin (French singing game) and Happy is the Miller (singing game). These all involve movement but are not what I’d describe as choreographed dances.

Creative Movement Activities are instrumental selections or songs that would be great to have kids (maybe with teacher assistance) choreograph.

All of the songs are organized according to grade but don’t be afraid to try a selection with upper or lower grades. We hope you’re having a great start to the school year and that you’re moving through it joyfully!

Super Fun Folk Dances

– live recording with authentic instruments
– videos of every dance
– projectable PowerPoint/PDF with information/worksheets about countries
– FUN dances your students will love!
Order print/disk or download

Primary Dances and Singing Games

– 27 fun singing games and dances
– seasonal games and dances
– order print/disk or download

We love to know how you’re using our materials!!! Share how you’ve used the Dance Unit in the Musicplay Teachers group on Facebook! If you don’t do Facebook, share in the forum at Musicplayonline. And of course, if you send us kids demos that we can use of your students using the Boomwhacker section – or any section of Musicplayonline, you’ll receive a month free.

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Join the Musicplay Teachers group on Facebook!

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Name Games and Activities to start the school year

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Some music teachers teach more than a thousand students each week and it can be very difficult to remember the names. Starting your first classes with a name game will help you to remember those names – at least for this music class! If you go the Back to School Unit in Units at www.Musicplayonline.com, there are many name games AND mixers to get your school year off to a great start.

Name Games:
K.149 Chickamy
K.8 Cookie Jar Chant
K.12 Hickety Tickty Bumblebee
1.36 Cuckoo
3.2 Number Concentration
4.9 Jolly Rhythm (another good one to do with the numbered paper plates)
5.2 Concentration

Mixers:
1.68 I LIke You
1.66 Rig a Jig Jig
2.73 Hot Cross Buns
4.5 Good Morning
5.33 Green Sally Up

For your olders:

Number Concentration

Give every student in the class a number on a white paper plate or index card. (You may want to organize a seating plan, and give them the number that they will have in the plan.) The teacher sings a number, and that student sings back his/her name. As you sing, tap a beat with one finger. Each time that a student forgets to sing on his/her number, choose a new tempo. When the students are familiar with the game, you can play this as an elimination game—if you don’t respond with your name after your number is sung, you go out. Invite students to be leaders and sing the numbers. The paper plate idea was suggested by a teacher from a district where she has really large classes. The paper plates help her students to remember what number they’re given and has made the game really successful for her.

Number Concentration is a simple reading using just so-mi-do and ta, ti-ti, rest. If your students can read the rhythms and pitches, have them learn the song by reading it. If they aren’t there yet, just read the rhythms, and teach the melody by rote.

Because it’s a simple reading song, it’s an excellent opportunity to review beat and rhythm with your students using the interactive rhythm tools and/or the matching worksheets. Use the interactive tool to model how to create an ostinato, B section, or introduction/ending for the song. The game is fun, and can be extended in many ways!

Go to Interactive Rhythm section, and select Word Rhythm Composition:

Model how to create a rhythm composition with the words “Number” and “Name”. Choose two kinds of body percussion and perform your new pattern. Try other ways of doing the body percussion and decide which you like the best. Transfer the body percussion to unpitched instruments and decidewhich you like the best. After modeling, give the students sets of “Number” and “Name” cards made up from the Printables in this section and have small groups of students create their own rhythm composition.

Students lay their pattern out on the floor. They choose 2 kinds of instruments and play the pattern. Use the song as the theme, and student compositions as B, C, D, E sections and create a rondo. Do a group practice. Ask them to refine their composition – maybe add some dynamics, or add some movement. Perform. Ask groups to think of what they “noticed” and “wondered” about their performances. (reflect on performance)

Many additional extensions are possible for the game – there are 11 worksheets given, and matching interactive activities so you can teach or model how to label beat and rhythm, then practice and reinforce.

Here’s a link to see how the Word Rhythm Composition might sound.
https://youtu.be/RQ5IP8vUdXM

For your littles:

Hello Beat Chant

Source: Rhythm Instrument Fun, and in Musicplay PreK
I’ve had this in other newsletters, but I can’t recommend it enough. It just works and is awesome to learn names AND to experience/review all the basic concepts. Using this beat chant establishes a routine, introduces the term “beat” and will help the teacher remember all of the names.

1. Say the chant, patting a steady beat as you speak. Say hello to the students using different kinds of voices: high/low, loud/quiet, fast/slow, speak/sing/whisper/shout, singing voice using a variety of solfa patterns. After you say the name, the class echoes, saying the name just like you did.

2. In the next lesson, instead of patting the steady beat, play the beat on a non-pitched instrument. Ask the students questions about the instrument
you’ve chosen to play.
* What is this instrument called?
* What is it made out of?
* How is the sound made on this instrument?

3. Demonstrate how to hold the instrument and how to play it before playing along with the chant. You may want to have the students play some instruments. If you have a tambourine or hand drum, you could hold it, but have the children tap it. This is an excellent way to introduce all of the non-pitched
instruments that you have in your classroom.

Looking for more ideas and icebreaker games for your classroom? MusciplayOnline has a plethora of songs you can use with your new and returning students! Search terms like “Name games”, “shakeups”, “brain teasers”, “openers”, “warmups”, “organizers”, and “cumulative”.

We love to know how you’re using our materials!!! Share the name games that you’re using in your classroom in the Musicplay Teachers group on Facebook! If you don’t do Facebook, share in the forum at Musicplayonline.

Follow #musicplayonline on instagram, twitter, Pinterest

Join the Musicplay Teachers group on Facebook!

Subscribe to the Themes & Variations YouTube Channel.

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Easter Egg Fun and Games

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Did you know Musicplay Online has a new Easter Unit AND a new Spring Unit?

Easter Egg Games with songs

Gr. 2 #79 Hide the Easter Eggs – piggyback tune

Gr. 3 #79 Hide Those Eggs – original song

1. Teach the children the song by rote. (choose the song you like best!)

2. Game Directions: Choose 3-5 students to hide Easter eggs in the classroom while the rest of the class hides eyes and sings the song. Eggs must be hidden in plain sight. (not under something or in a drawer) . The rest of the class hunts for an egg. Limit them to finding one egg per student. Choose new students to hide the eggs.

For an interesting variation that will help you assess rhythm reading, write rhythms on the eggs that you use in the game. When the child finds an egg, they bring it to you and tell you the rhythm. If you want to print/use the activity instead of making plastic egg rhythms, I’ll post these printable PDFs at www.musicplayonline.com on Monday in the Easter Unit. If you don’t already know about Musicplayonline.com, it’s an affordable subscription website with a wealth of resources for teaching PreK-6 music. ($149.95/year for ALL grades! – all the school can use it, and students can use a student login)

Compose a word rhythm using Basket/Egg

I did this activity with my PreK classes last week. You can do this with PreK-Gr. 3. I brought two Easter baskets and two egg shakers out and made a pattern with them. This pattern is: Egg-Egg-Basket-Basket. We said and clapped the pattern. Then, I invited a child to make a new pattern. We did several new patterns, saying and clapping them. As an ear training activity, I told the children that I would clap “basket” or “egg” and they should point to what I had clapped. To my delight, even my 3 year olds could point correctly to what I’d clapped.

It’s a short jump from clapping word rhythms, to labeling one sound on a beat as “ta” and two sounds on a beat as “ti-ti” and this is what I’d do with late K or grade 1-2 students.

Easter Egg Word Chain – how to play the game!

This game is online at www.musicplayonline.com.

1. When you click “start” the first egg rhythm appears. Have the students clap this rhythm several times, and ask them to remember it. Tell them that they will clap this rhythm AND the next one that appears.

2. Click on the egg rhythm, and it disappears, while a new one appears. Have the students clap rhythms one (that they can’t see) and rhythm two (that they are seeing).

Practice rhythm one and two a few times, and ask them to remember them. Tell them that they will clap both of these rhythms AND the next one that appears.

3. Click on the second egg rhythm, and it disappears, while a new one appears. Have the students clap rhythms one (that they can’t see) and rhythm two(that they can’t see) and rhythm 3 (that they are seeing).

Continue adding rhythms to the rhythm chain as far as your students can go.

Alternatively – if this is too hard for your students, just use the activity as a rhythm reading exercise. There are 8 levels of rhythm practice and there’s a cute surprise at the end!

There are 8 levels of rhythm practice. And there’s a cute surprise after reading all the rhythms.

This Egg Shaker Matching game is one that I’ve used with K-5.

K-1 students: Shake the egg and see if they can guess what’s in it. I used an interesting variety of materials in the eggs including popcorn, rice, dried peas, small screws, tums, pennies.
Gr. 2-5 students: Give each student one egg as they come in your classroom. Have them find the matching egg by listening carefully to the sounds their egg shaker makes.

To make it easy to check if students have found their match, I marked the pairs — but most students don’t notice the markings the first time they do this. I also made a Key of what’s in the eggs, because it is hard to tell!

There are many great games for Easter in musicplay! Here are notes on just a few of them:

Find the Easter Basket

Gr. 2#75 – practice dynamics, sm l while playing a hiding game

If you use the interactive Beat and Rhythm activities for Find the Easter Basket, you’ll see that our team has now created a menu for the activities.

Now you can jump right to the activity that you want to do with the students.

The new Beat Chart (activity 2) is new. Turn “off” the beats you want children to put “in their heads” and they sing out loud only for the beats that are “on.” Developing audiation is fun!!!

John the Rabbit in PreK

The game is simple and fun! Kids make a line on one side of the room. Each time they sing “Yes Ma’am” they take a little jump toward you. (You’re Farmer Brown) . When you get to the end of the song, shoo the bunnies out of the garden. Print the vegetable cards and use them in the song. Then, clap the word rhythms. I put out 4 cards on the floor. My PreK closed their eyes and I clapped “sweet potato.” They correctly identified the vegetable I’d clapped. Sweet!

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

A shout out to Dana Herro who performed this in her concert, having the students act it out. Instead of doing the fingerplay, when little Rabbit Foo Foo was hopping through the forest, they hopped.

Hurry Easter Bunny

This is a great song to practice so-mi-do. Kids love chase games and they learn the interval because they’ve sung it in the game so many times.

The Easter Unit at Musicplayonline.com also includes

– Music Match projectable (so you can teach/assess)

– Listening Glyph for Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks

– Compose an Easter Melody using s-m, mrd, or ls mrd or CDE GA. (choose the level for your students)

– Color by Note worksheet

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Did you know MusicplayOnline has a new Easter Unit AND a new Spring Unit?

Related Songs

There are lots of Easter and Bunny/Rabbit Songs:

Compose a melody for Easter or Spring!

There’s a so-mi version, a do-re-mi version and a drm sl or CDE GA version.

Easter Egg Hunt

Practice Rhythms as you go on an Easter Egg Hunt! There are 8 levels of rhythm practice. And there’s a cute surprise after reading all the rhythms.

Music Math

Want to have your students practice note values? There’s a projectable Music Math activity with corresponding downloadable worksheets. There are multiple levels so you can choose the level that best suits your students.

Egg Shaker Matching Game

K-1 students: Shake the egg and see if they can guess what’s in it. I used an interesting variety of materials in the eggs including popcorn, rice, dried peas, small screws, tums, pennies.

Gr. 2-5 students: Give each student one egg as they come in your classroom. Have them find the matching egg by listening carefully to the sounds their egg shaker makes.

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks

To introduce the piece in PreK-K-1 I have the children pretend they are chicks in the shell pecking their way out. It’s hard work, so when the long note comes, that’s when the chick is resting. View the kids demo! After active listening, have the kids complete the listening glyph. Enjoy!