Fall & Winter Resource Round Up - 5 Seasonal Favourites for the Music Room

 

Now that the school year has been chugging along for a while, I can feel myself slipping back into old music class routines and revisiting old favourites. As much as I love my old favourites, it’s a lot more fun for the kids (and for myself!) to throw in some new things now and then! I thought I’d share my 5 favourite resources to use in Fall and Winter in the music room!

1.       Recorder Treat BAG

One thing that I struggle with is having students who can’t celebrate Halloween in classes with students who love Halloween and want to do as many seasonal activities as we can. I wrote Recorder Treat BAG with this in mind – there are 6 songs with candy-themed names that students can play through alone as practice, or in centers with each other. It comes with 2 levels of rhythmic difficulty so you can match the task to your student’s abilities. It’s a great reintroduction to recorder for students who haven’t played since last year, or a great activity for students who are newer to recorder!

2.    Spooky Listening

Another great seasonal but not too Halloween-y activity to do is listening to spooky music! Some of my favourites include Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Danse Macabre, and Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. You can do any of your usual listening activities with these pieces – I love doing colour by number listening glyphs (I use this bundle by Jena Hudson), listen and roll, or even just having students draw what the music makes them think of. This is great to do for the few days around Halloween when students need something to focus all the crazy energy they have

3.       Spooky Shaker and other fun videos on Swick’s Classroom

I’ve talked about how much I love Swick’s Classroom before – his Spooky Shaker song is just one of my favourites to do around Halloween! Kids love this way to make egg shakers more exciting.

4.       15 Performance Review Worksheets

 

With Fall comes our first performances of the year – for me that’s Remembrance Day, which is coming up in less than a month! I love using worksheets from this bundle after performances to get the students’ views on how they did. Plus, kids never get enough of watching themselves back on video, so it’s a fun way to wrap up the whole concert experience!

5.       Charlie Brown Xmas Listening

Charlie Brown Christmas has always been my favourite Christmastime special, so I knew I had to write a little listening unit to go with it. This is great for those few classes after your winter concert, or with grades that aren’t performing at your winter concert. It’s educational, but also interesting enough to keep kids engaged in those last weeks where they just want to be on break already!

 

I hope you get the chance to check out some of the resources I talked about today – happy teaching!