Rocking it Old School Kindergarten Style

My favorite assortment of instruments, that are quite likely older than me---

Okay, sometimes kids just need to bang things. Call it a primal need, but well, it is real.  Today was one of those days in my classroom.

Too cold to go outside to play.  Checked the phase of the moon, not full. Clearly my plan for quiet work with a partner literacy would dissolve into chaos.
My Beethoven slide show on the SMART board with the  serene pictures of wildflowers and mountain tops was not cutting it.  Okay, let's just bang stuff then.

I got out my crustiest half broken watermelon picnic basket and pulled out all my old school instruments. There were tambourines, triangles, maracas, rhythm sticks, assorted bells, weird jingly things that I have assigned names.  We played our alphabet chant.  We chanted our sounds.  We chanted our sight words.  We dinged and clanked along to a new song I have written called, Everyone Matters. 

No one accidentally dinged or clanked a classmate.  Our door was closed securely, so as not to bother any classroom that was not fulfilling their daily primal banging of things during literacy time.  No 40-year-old tambourines were damaged in the process and everyone had a meaningful literacy experience, and an Advil. 

Just kidding. . .maybe.

A Simple Joy We Never Knew to Appreciate as Kids

I took my kindergarteners outside today, after over a week long frigid stretch.  We have had this crazy polar vortex weather, forcing three days of school closing in Minnesota in one week. 

Finally another seven inches of snow arrived this morning, but brought the temp to a balmy 17 degree. That is  flip flop weather in the Land of 10,000 lakes.

My students were a little, well nuts, actually. We really needed  time to explore the snow piles on the edge of the playground.

We headed out and played until most had soggy mittens.  We returned to classroom pink cheeked and I turned on my hot pot, for hot chocolate.  We lined up the wet boots in the hallway and as the students drank their hot chocolate, I sang them some of our classroom standards with my guitar. I am quite certain that not one knew to articulate an appreciation for their teacher deferring their math lesson, to get some much needed fresh air. But, they sure knew it was fun, and so did I. Our math will still be there tomorrow.

Thank you, Pete Seeger, for many musical memories

Pete Seeger, Where have all the flowers gone?

We all have early memories music. 
Music programs at school or church where we were dressed in our very best and forbidden from doing anything messy until we made it though looking presentable. Practicing for piano lessons with that slightly or seriously scary piano teacher, depending on the day. 
Singing at the top of our lungs because it always sounded better in the bathroom with the door shut.

With Pete Seeger's music I am transported back to 1981, lying on my back and combing patterns into the carpeting while listening to my parents record player over and over again. When I heard, Where have all the flowers gone, as a child, even at a young age I knew it was about growing up and changing.  Years later, in my teens when it became one of the first songs I learned to play on my own guitar I listened more heard it as more of a protest song about doing the things we "have to" because it is what society expects. Now in my 30's I hear it much again like I did when I was five,  things move on and life's cycle of things we both can and cannot control, though we may try.  Regardless, it has brought me many years of peace. 

The ideas that were so prevalent in the music Pete Seeger both wrote and played were inspiring for many generations of people and I continue to hear the message of the preciousness of life and how at every turn, we all matter.   Peace to you, and thank you, Mr. Seeger.

Sing your heart out

You can tell just by looking, there is pure joy in this picture. In the moment after is was snapped, the sisters pulled the blanket over their heads and erupted into a scrambling thrashing pile. Then moments later the outdoor concert we were at at the community band shell began and they were sudden statues.  Transfixed by the music on stage and the familiar connection they had to the songs from the Sound of Music, my girls began to belt along. The little one giving it all her gusto not caring what people on picnic blankets next to us were thinking. The older one clearly more carefully censoring herself and performing the music as she'd expect to hear it.  Regardless, both singing their hearts out.

We all have our own connections to music.  Something that brings us back to a certain place or time in our lives.  A certain person, even. I've heard it said that smell is the most powerful sense, but I'd like to believe that sound is a close second.

When we sing, we feel something; sadness, longing for a time or place, love, regret, joy.

There is always singing at our house. 
Singing in the kitchen. Singing in the bedrooms. 
Singing in the bathroom. Singing in the backyard.
Don't forget the car singing. We are loud, deliberate and joyful because music makes us feel, singing makes us remember, singing makes us happy.

Where it all began. . .

My first day of school! I wasn't excited just to use that amazing Snoopy lunch box for the first time. I loved school, and I didn't really even know what it was.  I knew I loved helping both of my parents in their own 1st grade and 5th grade classrooms late in the summer when they were getting ready for the new school year. I knew I loved the idea of sitting in a desk and the smell of boxes of crayons, pencils and erasers in the dark supply room in the office. I knew I loved the idea of learning.  Sure I did, I was a teachers' kid. The kid of two teachers in fact. School was my life at home before my own school life even began. Now, as I step into my own kindergarten classroom each day I cannot imagine a life without school. How lucky I am to be doing exactly what my heart told me, when I was five-years-old!  Now, each day I get to help other five-year-old and six-year olds learn to love school, too.