So the last few days of school we've had a different round of "specials" than normal. Our students in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades were granted a reward day. They were allowed to choose up to 3 rewards based on their test scores. If they met or exceeded the goal, they chose from several possible rewards such as: Art, PE, technology, computers, free-reading, music, movie time. The students could potentially choose PE for 3 half hours. Some did, and they looked exhausted by the end. I only had students choose music for 1 session (no my feelings weren't hurt), so I thought I would try something different.
I have many things in my room that I don't always know how to use. I have an F-bar bass xylophone that I never know how to use. I have over 50 Boomwhackers that often leave me with a headache. I also have some 5-gallon buckets and a 50-gallon barrel that I thought I would do some Stomp-type activities as well. With my biggest group signed up being 12, and only 30 minutes, I thought I could tolerate these noise-machines and throw together something different.
I have some Boomwhacker songs typed into a Mimio document. While the trax was playing I just pointed to the letters and let them play away. Buckets and drums could play on a pattern that matched the song and if they couldn't find it, they could just play on the beat or when I pointed. The bass xylophone played whenever I pointed to the letter F. It really added to the songs that were based in the key of F.
We had enough time for every student to rotate through all of the instruments. We also used the Octavator Caps on the Boomwhackers. Adds a nice deep pitch to the songs. Most of these students were in band so they were able to add good rhythm patterns. These pictures show 5th graders which was a nice send-off from elementary to Middle School.
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