i'm loving ...

... my new p.j. pants, made from Amy Butler's book In Stitches. I shortened the pants substantially and added the band of owl print to complete the "bedtime" theme.

... this incredibly beautiful linen quilt that I bought from Amanda's Etsy shop. Visions of picnics, stargazing, cuddling and dozing dance in my head!

... live music in the classroom

A local Tarahumara (indigenous) man came to give my students a short violin concert. The Tarahumara make their own violins and play them in a fiddle-like manner.

The children watched intently. Later on in the day, look who I caught trying to play the violin! Adorable.

ellen edson - folk songs for children

Did you know about this already? I consider myself a bit of a children's music aficionado, but Ellen Edson's music just entered my radar screen. I LOVE IT! Take a listen:

This song, Sweet Potatoes, is from her first children's album, Family Fare: Folk Songs for Children and Their Families. What makes this music special, I think, is the Appalachian mountain style that seeps from every chord. Ellen's down-home vocals are accompanied by guitar, banjo, fiddle, autoharp and Appalachian dulcimer. Sweet, sweet relief from all of that gaudily synthesized, commercial children's music that's so readily available. This CD is a great way to introduce your child/students to traditional American music, as Ellen interprets folk "greats" such as Woodie Guthrie.


Ellen just released a new album, The Sweetness of You, which I heard about through one of my favorite designers, Kristin Nicholas. Kristin did the artwork for the album. After a quick listen, I knew I had to add it to my collection! I encourage you to do the same. There is little better that filling a child's life with meaningful music - and singing it together.

the lucky number and a heidi headband hiatus

Thanks for all of your comments! I used a this random number generator to pick the lucky lady, and the winner this time is ...

COMMENT #3! So Theresa, could you send me your mailing address when you get a chance? Felicidades, as we say down here south of the border. You can expect a package of handmade goodness by the end of August!

I took a few minutes today to make some of Amy's "Heidi Headbands" from Bend the Rules Sewing.

This one is for a six-year-old, so I added elastic instead of a twill tape tie so she can manage it without help from an adult.

Both the dog and the mushroom ribbon are from Reprodepot.

These are so quick and fun to make! Just sing Zippidy-doo-dah a few times and you'll be finished. (Okay, so I guess you'd have to sing it about 30 times.) May I suggest some other music instead? We just discovered Annet Louisan, a German singer whose music is relaxing in an "I'm-hanging-out-in-a-French-cafe" sort of way. Perfect for crafting, and perfect for adding to your world music curriculum!

My reading pillow has been getting some action, as well. Thinking about making your own? Be sure to sign up for my mailing list in the side bar! You'll be the first to know when the pattern becomes available!

Ta ta for now,
Meg

rain stick - palo de lluvia

Look at what I found in the corner of a little store out here in the middle of nowhere!

Did you know we had a pink sky? My old, broken camera sure thinks so. Thank goodness we bought one of these which we will retrieve when we visit California next week!

Rain sticks, or palos de lluvia, are an invention of Chilean natives, who used them prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in order to summon the rains. Rain sticks can be made from cactus or bamboo, and consist of a hollowed out shoot into which the cactus spines or nails are embedded in a spiral pattern. Small pebbles and seeds are closed within the shoot, and tilting the rain stick causes the pebbles to shower past the nails, thereby producing the rain sound.

When I started teaching in Creel, a rain stick was already in use in the classroom as a preparatory exercise for the Silence Game. At the beginning of the year, I give Grace and Courtesy lessons on what to do when you hear the rain stick. (Model stopping all movement and closing the eyes.) Once all of the children have had the lesson, I can "play" the rain stick at any moment in the day, and all of the children stop what they are doing, close their eyes, and experience several moments of silence and peace. Once I notice that one or more children start fidgeting, I say quietly "You may open your eyes and return to your work."

They love it.

Here's a link that explains how to make your own rain stick.

:) Meg

Saturday Song - Tue Tue

First off on today's blogging agenda, I wanted to address some technical difficulties associated with these song clips. If the clips do not show up in your side bar under the title "Songs to Sing with Children," you are missing a plug-in that you will have to download. It might look like a green puzzle piece when you scroll over the empty space under the title. Click on it and it will guide you through the simple downloading process. If for some reason you are unable to download the plug-in, you can always listen to the files by clicking on the blue "View my Files" box in the side bar. Click once on the icon you want to listen to under "Songs for the Classroom" and the song will play - no need to download it to your computer first. Hope this helps!

And now for the big news ...In honor of the centennial celebration of the town of Creel, we were treated to a wonderful choral concert featuring a very well known children's choir from Morelia (in the south of Mexico.) It was a VERY big deal, as such concerts are rare in our little town in the sticks. We encouraged the parents at my school to bring their children. Many attended, as well as some of my students who graduated last year. Well, you won't believe what happened. The choir did a bit of a 'round the world tour, singing songs from various continents. When the director told us that they were going to sing a song from Africa, one of my students told me "Tue Tue is from Africa!" (Tue Tue is a classroom favorite.) And then the choir started singing Tue Tue!!! Words are not sufficient to describe the excitement and surprise of my students in attendance. Here's a really poor, flash-less photo to prove it:And that wasn't it! They also sang La Bamba, another favorite of my children. Wow. My children ran up to me after the concert and, with beaming little faces, told me "They sang our songs! They sang our song from Africa! And La Bamba! Those our our songs!" I thought to myself ... how interesting that they always refer to the songs as theirs. For me, this just further solidifies my believe in the importance of exposing children to different music from around the world at a tender age. The wonders of the absorbent mind allow the child to internalize everything, from language and song to movements and attitudes, and make it 100% theirs. Music from other lands is no longer strange. If they have the opportunity to try on clothing from other lands, it is no longer strange. Same goes with food. If these cultures are no longer strange, but rather interesting and exciting, so are the people who belong to the cultures. This is how to nurture compassionate, future citizens of the world. I blogged more about this idea here. So get to downloading the world music files if you haven't already. With that, I'll leave you with the song that caused all the uproar among my students - Tue Tue, a nonsense song from Ghana.

Tue tue barima tue tue
Tue tue barima tue tue
Abofroda, ama dawa dawa tue tue
Abofroda, ama dawa dawa tue tue
Barima tue tue .... tue tue.

Consider adding two claps after the first and second lines. This song can also be sung in a round.

Peace,
Meg

You never know exactly what we want

My husband grew up in an Irish-American household. Whenever any of his relatives from Ireland visited, he was always perplexed by their habits. Apparently, whenever offered anything, especially food, they vehemently refused. After several attempts at serving them, the food was finally plopped on their plates and they went about eating it voraciously!

Yesterday he made me laugh by saying that "Montessori teachers are like Irish house guests. You never know exactly what they want." He then continued, "I never know when to throw something away ... now I always have to think ... could this be made into something useful for the classroom?"

Good boy. It is true that we Montessorians have a penchant for jumping up and down at the sight of some seemingly useless object. For example, today I just about shrieked with giddy-ness when I saw these treble clef, wrought iron napkin holders at the tiny general store in Creel.

I bought three! Lord knows I have a ton of music materials to display on my shelves.

The Montessori Mantra:

Aprons,
small pitchers
and cards,
Oh My!

Who Am I? Cards and Composers Definition Stages

I've written up a set of Who am I? cards to go with the instruments of the orchestra and composer materials. Download by clicking on the Box.net "View My Files" button in the side bar. Print them out, write the answer on the back and laminate. Easy-peasy.

I've also written definition stages that feature 5 composers. This material should also be directly downloadable under the "Composers" folder at the "View My Files" button. The photos are there as well. You will need to print off two sets of the photos, cut them out, and paste them onto card stock.

Here's the pretty composer definition stages pouch made using Karla's tutorial.


I spent the majority of the day laminating and cutting (my husband arrived from his U.S. sojourn with two cartridges of laminate for my Xyron 900!) I went to the local stationary store and had the control books bound. I think I'm about all set with the music curriculum. I was even able to put some fitting music note buttons on as closures to some of the pouches. The only items left on my list are:

1.) Design and make CD pouches for the World Music Curriculum.
2.) Make pouches for the Who Am I? cards.
3.) Buy the world music instrument 3-part cards from Michael Olaf (one day!)


A note to those of you downloading this material. I use a font called Monotype Corsiva. If you don't have it on your computer, the formatting might be messed up. If this is the case, look to install the font or simply highlight the text and change the font to one available to you.

I can't wait to share with you some of the incredible material-making supplies my husband brought back with him ... more on this later! Oh, and a warm welcome to all the Montessori teachers of Nashville, Tennessee! Thanks to Debi for telling them about the blog at their meeting!

Peace,
Meg

Sight Reading "White" Boards

Don't have enough money to buy the set of 17 white boards from Neinhuis? Make 'em. It's kind of a time consuming process, and you must be "in the present moment" with your sharpie or other permanent marker, but the results are classy. I was going to paint this book board stuff white with some spray paint before drawing on the notes, but I thought it looked unprofessional. This way, the boards match the rest of my music materials, which are mostly golden in tone. You will need to do some measuring to make sure that all the notes will fit on your staff. Pick a large coin that will serve as your note template. I used a 5 peso coin which is about the size of a quarter. For each note, I placed the coin on the board and traced around it with the sharpie, then filled it it.

You will also need a yard/meter stick to make clean, spiffy lines.

Each board is numbered in order of difficulty. If you need to know what note patterns the 17 boards have, order Susan Stephenson's (AMI) music curriculum from Michael Olaf. It's $5 and well worth it.

Also, thanks to Jo from Japan for sending in some Japanese music files! She also sent in this photo of a woman playing the shamisen - the instrument used on two of the three files she sent. The other file is a great Japanese remake of John Denver's Country Roads. It would be great to have the children listen to both versions! The three new files are available for you to download if you click on the small box.net button in the sidebar.


My husband comes home tomorrow! It's been a long week without him. I'll be driving three hours to the "big city" of Chihuahua to pick him up at the airport. Oh, and did I mention that I will be driving a thoroughly Mexican-ized car? The muffler fell off of our little Toyota Rav4 last week. Now I will totally blend in on the highway! No license plates (immigration didn't give us any and Washington, D.C. made us send our plates back to them) and a healthy engine hum. Too cool. Let's just hope nothing else falls off during the drive! Come Wednesday I'll be uploading Composer Definition Stages and Who Am I? stories for the composers and the instruments. Have a happy Tuesday.

Peace,
Meg

Singing in the Classroom

72 song picture cards ... a late evening listening to some good music and I can check off another item from my music curriculum list.

This is an idea a picked up from Susan Stephenson, the owner of Michael Olaf. I ordered the 3-6 music curriculum and have found it to be a helpful resource. In the section about the Song Picture Cards, Susan says:

Song Picture Cards, like Poetry Picture Cards, make it easy for a young, non-reading child to ask for a certain song. Keep these in a box on the music shelves. A child can get out a card whenever she wants and sing it to herself, or ask another child or the teacher to sing it with her.

I would show the children the new song picture card when I introduce the song, either with the whole group at the end of the day, or to an individual child or small group. The new song card is then placed in the box on the shelf.


I made my cards with cardboard, tracing around a CD case before cutting it out with my paper cutter. (Bless your heart if you do all the cutting with scissors. You have more patience and hand strength than I do.) Once all 72 pieces of cardboard are cut, either draw or search Google images for relevant pictures for each song. For example, I found a painting of a partridge in a pear tree for The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Then, using your prettiest handwriting, write out the title to each song. Cut and paste title and picture to the cardboard, and laminate using contact paper. Use the same method as you would for making underlays.
Rotate the song picture cards according to holidays, time of the year, etc. I would have 10-20 displayed at any given time. 72 options would be overwhelming!

At a loss for songs? Rise Up Singing to the rescue! This is such a great resource, especially if you play the guitar in the classroom like I do. Along with lyrics to over 1200 songs, you get the simple guitar chords as well! You can order it from Michael Olaf.

And some photos of other things I've made in the past few days:


Silk dupion-lined storage pouch for the Composers material.

A silk obi-style pouch for the music note labels. This material should be placed near the bells.


Tiny orchestra fabric pouch that contains five labels: the percussion family, the brass family, the woodwind family, the string family, and the special instruments. Each of these has a different colored dot in one corner. The child can mix up all of the instruments of the orchestra cards (which now have color-coded dots on the back, indicating the family to which they belong) and, using this little material, sort them into their families. The dots serve as control of error. A more advanced child can sort the instrument name labels only, which also have color-coded dots on the back.

A simple CD pouch, hand-embroidered, to hold a special CD, such as entire works of a certain composer, music of a specific genre, etc. This material won't be on the shelf all of the time, only on special occasions.


Happy Easter to all! May you eat plentiful chocolate, and, in my family's case, may you emerge alive and covered in confetti. Here are some confetti-filled eggshells decorated by my talented aunt. Don't worry, these are not crushed on the heads of willing victims (see previous link.) I think these have been decorations in my parents' house for upwards of 15 years now!

Composers

More music paraphernalia - this time I get to show off my audio editing skills! I hope my husband reads this post, because he will have to take back all that he said about me being a bit "slow" when it comes to the computer. Ha!

At the "View My Files" button in the side bar, your will find some more files: Composers 3-part cards and sound clips. Sound clips! Whoopee! Music isn't about pictures, folks, its about MUSIC! So why in the world would you have composer cards (or instrument cards) without listening to songs written by them? Et voila! Here you have it: 18 clips of songs by the 18 composers on the cards, edited with fade-ins and fade-outs.

The child puts on the disc (almost 16 minutes total running time) and spreads out the picture cards (without names) on a rug. She then picks the photo of the composer while listening to the part of his song. At the end, she can check her work to see if she matched correctly. (Number the composer photos from 1-18 in order of appearance on the CD.) If you copy directly from the folder to the left, the order will be:

1- Dvorak
2- Prokofiev
3- Beethoven
4-Ravel
5- Bach
6- Pachelbel
7- Chopin
8- Mozart
9- Rachmaninoff
10- Miles Davis
11- Verdi
12- Debussy
13- Scott Joplin
14- Gershwin
15- Copeland
16- Bernstein
17- Vivaldi
18- Tchaikovsky

Also label the back of the name cards . This is a more advanced exercise for children who are already reading. They match the names only to the CD track.

Be sure when burning the CD that you burn it with individual tracks with a 2-second pause between each.

Of course, this puts a whole new spin on how you present these composers to the children. No more will they wonder why in the world you are showing them pictures of goofy looking men and telling them their names. Now you can present the names of the composers to the child with the audio. Present 2-3 composers and clips at a time.

You might have guessed by now, but music is really my "thing." I love all of the Cultural Areas of the curriculum, but music has a special place in my heart. I've always been a singer and I dabble in guitar and piano. When I was a teenager I was classically trained, but all that theory, voice and passion now manifests itself in singing La Bamba with a group of dancin' 3-6 year olds. So worth it!


xo,
Meg

Instrument Families Definition Stages

For your downloading enjoyment, I present:

Definition Stages material for the instrument families. The Word file is available to members of the Yahoo group, and the photos (also in Word format) can be downloaded at the "View My Files" button under "Definition States photos." Please ignore the extra photo-montage of the special instruments. Just leave them out. It makes more sense with just the four main categories.

Check out Karla's awesome tutorial to make the definition stages pouch. I lined mine with black silk dupion. The orchestra fabric (rad!) I found a while back at Craft Connection. My cards are still waiting to be laminated, and the pouch is patiently waiting for my husband to return from the US with my new button stash.
Here's how my 3-part card modified duvet turned out for the instruments.


Also, make sure to check out the 3-part cards for the BEACH! that Debi downloaded for the Yahoo group. Thanks for contributing! Anyone else? :)

Instruments of the Orchestra!!!

I've been wanting to design this material for quite some time, and it's finally done! It took me a while to find the components I needed to make an audio/visual exercise where the children matched an audio clip of the instrument to a photo of that instrument. You can download this material by clicking on the "View My Files" box.net button in the side bar. I will also be sharing a tutorial on how to make the CD/card book shown below:



The catalyst in this endeavor was ordering the following CD from Montessori Services. "Peter Ustinov reads The Orchestra" provided me with clips of each instrument organized by instrument families: strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and special instruments. Previously I had contacted various symphony orchestras to ask if they could provide the clips that I needed, but to no avail.

I highly encourage you to order the entire CD, and if you are a parent, to get the book that accompanies it. For those of you who can't afford it or live outside the United States, I have uploaded to Box.net (see sidebar) the five excerpts you will need for this exercise. Please download these only if you really can't afford the CD.

Once you have the CD, burn copies of each "song," from numbers 5-9, on a separate CD. Does this make sense? For example, you will have "The String Family" on one CD, "The Brass Family" on another, etc.

Also, print off the Word file available at Box.net that contains the accompanying 3-part cards of photos of the instruments. Both the aforementioned files are in the folder "Instruments of the Orchestra." I suggest printing the cards on hefty cardstock. For this particular audio/visual exercise, you will need the cards without labels. (The control cards and labels are also included in the file. To store them, I'm planning on making the modified card duvet with the same instrument fabric.) On the back of each picture card, you will need to write the instrument family to which it belongs, and the number of the order in which it is heard on the CD. This serves as the control of error. For example, the clarinet card would have on the back:

The Woodwind Family - 5

When the child finishes, she can turn over the picture cards and check if the numbers are in order. The family name is important because the children can do a sorting exercise with the cards as well. Write up labels for each of the families. The child places the labels on the top of a rug and mixes up all the photo cards, sorting them into their families under the labels. The family name is the control of error for this exercise.

Here's how to make the CD book. I used a "fat quarter" of instrument fabric I ordered a while back at Craft Connection and 3/4 yard of golden silk dupion. (Elegant!) Unfortunately, the golden silk doesn't photograph well on the clunker of a camera, but what does?

Cut one outer fabric (the instruments) and one liner fabric to 43cm x 35cm. Then cut 5 strips of the liner fabric to 9cm x 35 cm.

On each of the strips, fold a long edge 1/4 in toward the wrong side of the fabric and press. Fold over once more (1/4 in) and press. On 4 strips, fold over the opposite long edge 1/4 in and press toward the wrong side. The one strip that is left without a fold is the bottom strip, which will be caught within the seam and finished when you attach the liner to the outer fabric.

Stitch each strip along the double folded edge. Press each strip after stitching.

Arrange the five strips, stitched side up, on the large piece of liner fabric. Check to see that five CDs and the cards fit.
Pin the top strip about 9cm down from the top. Sew along three sides, leaving the finished seam unattached. Make sure you catch the 1/4 in fold on the bottom in your stitching. This leaves a nice finished edge on the bottom that won't unravel. Press. Attach the next strip in the same manner, pressing after each strip.
With right sides facing, pin inner pocket lining to outer fabric. Using a 1/2 in seam, stitch pieces together. At the top of the book, machine baste the seam. This will eventually be ripped open for turning.
Trim corners and edges and press open the top, machine-basted area. Use a seam ripper to open. Turn the whole thing inside out and press once again.

Fold in half with the pockets facing out. Using pins, mark the center of the book. Starting from the bottom, stitch a seam to the top, using the pins as guides. Be sure that the open, pressed edge is folded toward the inside, and caught in this middle seam.

Cut 2 pieces of cardboard for a snug fit. Insert, and hand stitch closed.


That's it! It's pretty simple to make. I will put some cute music note closures on it when my husband gets back from the US with all of the goodies I ordered from Reprodepot and Craft Connection. You could put a snap closure on this or a bow closure - whatever floats your boat.

Hope you enjoy!

Meg