Its the 100th Day of School- Now What!?

For some of us the event to end all events – at least for Kinders and Firsties – is the 100th day of school! As you plan for this great day I have a couple of ideas that you might like to give a try to your music class more celebratory and acknowledge this big achievement in the lives of your K and 1 classes. Here are some ideas you might enjoy trying out to help celebrate 100 Day.

I’ve changed a few things to make it my own and I am sharing those ideas with you here. If you aren’t familiar with this great little story get it. One hundred hungry ants go marching off to a picnic and along the way the smallest ant complains because they are going sooooo slow! So they rearrange themselves in various ways to try to get there sooner. How fun! I was introduced to this book years ago in my Orff level one class. I’ve changed a few things to make it my own and I am sharing those ideas with you here. So as with any fun story you plan to use with your students make it interactive by adding a song to keep students engaged.

Then of course add instruments to make it even more exciting! If you plan to use this with first grade perhaps try making the Bass Xylophone part a broken bordun.

Okay, so that was fun!

Here’s another idea to help you celebrate 100 day. How about 100 beats of rhythm? Have every child in Kindergarten or First grade cut and/or color a beat – whether it is a quarter note, quarter rest or eighth note pair – which might be done by two students. Or you could have your students work together to create 100 measures of rhythms. You will want to start with how many you have in the grade level you are working with and then decide which arrangement will accomplish your goal. What a fun thing to have lining the hallway as far as the eye can see!

Mark Parker

Mark is a member of the TpT Music Crew, a group of fabulous teacher-authors who work passionately and collaboratively to bring you the best resources and ideas for teaching music.

So to explain the activity above: I am picturing having kinders create using the first page with dot stickers. 1 dot for ta, 2 dots for ti-ti, if you are ready to venture into rests then they can leave one sandwich blank. If you have awesome food stickers that matched ta and ti-ti how much fun would that be? Then I thought what if I gave first grade one kindergartener’s work to translate into notation? Use the second sandwich page to do this and let students cut and paste using the notation squares. And now poof! you have a lovely set of measures that you can post in the hallway kinder child above, first grade notation directly below so that all can compare. You can download the pdf file for this activity below.

HungryAntswksht

Mark Parker

Mark is a member of the TpT Music Crew, a group of fabulous teacher-authors who work passionately and collaboratively to bring you the best resources and ideas for teaching music.