New Instruments!!

So last year I taught at a school where I had 6 Orff instruments that were so broken that they couldn't be used to their full potential.  I changed schools last year and moved to where I grew up.  I happened to get a job at a school with 14 Orff instruments!  I was incredibly happy and felt so blessed to have them!  Well I quickly discovered that even though I had more, I had class sizes that did not work with 14 instruments.  I have classes that go up to 26-28 students.  Some of them are in 6th grade which means their bodies are pretty big and so sharing a small instrument doesn't work so well for them.

I started doing some fundraising on donorschoose.org.  I managed to raise 1400 dollars towards new instruments!  Like a true rookie, I accidentally made my first project 2200 dollars total!  While I didn't fulfill my project by the deadline, my boss at the county level found out I needed more instruments and bought me NINE more.  I'm so incredibly blessed!  So in addition to the money I raised through donorschoose, I now have 9 beautiful new instruments! (Although one is on backorder and has not come in yet).

With the donorscoose money I will be starting a couple SMALLER projects and fulfilling them for other needs around my classroom!

Take a look at some pictures:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I will definitely be making good use of them both in the classroom and with my Orff ensembles.  I can accept MANY more students into the ensembles!  I'm excited and so are my students!!!!

Frozen Listening

I don't know about you, but many of my students are obsessed with the movie Frozen.  I love to do listening and critical thinking with my older students.  http://miscellaneousme.wordpress.com/ has a lot of really great music listening files available on TpT.  I have purchased a lot of them over the past couple years.  But I have also started to branch out and make my own when I need them!!!  (And I need them a lot).

So I decided to do Frozen.  But I used the Alex Boye version as well and did a compare/contrast.  This is great to use with a Venn Diagram.  And to just have student write the answers to the three questions.  It incorporates critical thinking AND writing into the music classroom which is something I'm required to do.

I actually have nothing in my TpT store.  Although I'd like to someday be up there with the greats like Amy Abbott and Cara at Miscellaneous Me!