Sing A New Song

The blog that I'm in love with this week is called "Sing A New Song". This site is run by Jeana Beasley. In her words:

Sing a Song is a blog about children's songs and music activities to facilitate learning, in fun and exciting ways. It focuses on games for learning notes, rhythms, intervals, chords and other musical concepts. Educational songs about monthly themes are also found here for preschoolers and early elementary. Email me if you have any questions or suggestions at my3redhead@gmail.com.

One of her ideas was so great, I was unable to rest until I went out and bought Duplo blocks so that I could make my own set of rhythm blocks.

 

 

To me this was such a simple yet brilliant idea!

You can always see in a student's eyes if they are zoning out or just not getting what you are trying to teach them. My next step is to change the approach in which the concept is presented. Every student be it a child or an adult has their own way of learning. Some need to see it in black and white on the page, others need to hear it audibly, today there are those who need to interact with it by computer and then there are those who need to touch it.

Back when I was an elementary education major, one of the major part of our grade was coming up with manipulatives to go with the lesson plans we had to create. My teacher was really big on these. Each manipulative was placed in a Ziploc Bag and we had to come up with a plan to organize them. At that time I didn't get how important this was until I was in my first classroom and had a student who didn't learn with the lecture method.

This site is full of alternative methods of teaching for the Piano Teacher. You have to check it out!