Songbird Studio

 Hi! It's me again, two weeks in a row (kinda) that's good, right? Today I'm sharing a visual schedule I use. I use this in two ways.        1) On Google Slides, set up with each icon as its own individual icon, and then move each icon to the "Done" section after we complete it.       2) I have another set printed, laminated, and velcro-ed, and I move each icon from the "To Do" to the "Done" section in a similar, but more concrete, fashion, for the students that benefit from that.   Do you do anything similar? I'll talk about what my general session schedule is in more detail later.  If you are interested in downloading your own copy, click here !

I have been using a formula for our color review with my littles in their music groups the past couple of weeks.  It has been fun and easy, and very straightforward, so I thought I'd share!  (Plus the pictures just make me happy 🌈)  We have gone in rainbow order (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple), devoting one class to each color.  Right after our hello song, we usually do a movement activity.  For our color review, we've had free movement to a song about that day's color, using that day's colored movement props.  Next, we usually play instruments, so during our review, we've had free play using instruments in that color with a song about that color!  Finally, we always end with a book, so we have read a book devoted to each color each day.  The books I've been using primarily are from Cantata Learning .  They include CDs and we've used the music for the movement or instrument activities sometimes. You can...

This month in my music groups, we are exploring the element of rhythm.  One of the easiest and most fun ways to do this is by playing in a drum circle.  For my drum circles, we always play through a round or two of my basic commands, which you can see here . A simple exercise we start with early in the month is composing our own rhythm patterns!  We begin with basic choices, such as: |               BEAT—one sound on one beat    (AKA—“ta” or quarter note) | ˉ |          DOU-BLE—two sounds on one beat (AKA—“ti-ti” or beamed eighth notes) Z               (REST)—no sound on one beat    (AKA—“(no sound)” or quarter rest) Each student is asked to choose FOUR of any combination of those options.  They may choose four BEATs, or BEAT BEAT DOUBLE BEAT, or some smart alecks l...

Tomorrow I teach Leisure Skills.  In that class, we work on a lot of different "hobby" areas, finding areas that our kids enjoy, and exploring ways that they can be successful.  For our youngest group, who are around a toddler developmental level, we have four centers.  At the beginning of the school year, we have a rotation schedule, so the kids go to each station and take turns, but as the school year progresses, we begin to let them have free exploration time. We always have four centers, based in the following areas:  building, fine motor, sensory, art, dramatic play, and gross motor.  For example, one month we'll have building with alphabet blocks, a seasonal sensory bin, a collage art area, and mini golf.  Another month, we may  have building with mega bloks, a dress up area, paper dolls, and a cardio drumming area.  We generally always have building and gross motor centers, the rest flux depending on what else we decide to try.  In...