Money!!!

Another one of those life skills that is difficult to grasp is money. This is a topic that we go over continually all year round. One of my students favorite songs is Honey Bunny by Teacher Tipster. If you have never heard of Teacher Tipster I highly recommend you check him out. He is hilarious, has fantastic ideas, and just fun.
 

 Wasn't that great!!! Another way we have been practicing money is with this great sheet made by Hailey from Autism Tank  (So, I thought this was made by Hailey, but maybe I got it from Boardmaker Share, once I figure it out, I will update this post). Students match the coin, coin name and value.  I use this as one of my work boxes. One student has realized the color coding (but he is still practicing matching the right things together), but the others work hard at getting everything in the correct spot.

If you are looking for more tasks I have a pinterest board dedicated to them or check out the others I have posted on the blog by going here!

Sight Words: Embedded into science

As I have mentioned in previous post, we practice sight words all the time. During our science lesson is another great way I can add in a little practice. Since my students LOVE music and they seemed to hang onto information better if I put it to a tune (the best one is my song for an author that I completely made up on a whim). Our current science unit is about the 5 senses.  I projected a song on the board and after we sang it, we took a few minutes to circle the sight words in the song.  I called outa word and  one of the kiddos would find the word and circle.  An easy way to get them out of their seats and to practice sight words during a time dedicated for science instruction.


  

Singing our sight words

In addition to the games we play with sight words we also sing some A LOT of songs that often include our sight words. One we sing everyday during our morning circle is our sight word for the week song. This is sung to the tune of bingo and I often see it one other sights as the sight word of the day.    Sometimes the sight word will go for two weeks if one of the weeks is short. When I fist made the little chart to go with it I decided to use velcro, but if I was redoing it, I would just write the words on with a dry erase marker. It would be a big time and velcro saver.



We also sing songs that relate to our current unit and use those songs to find our sight words such as like the Martin Luther King Jr song.

 Another way we incorporate our sight words into our singing is I find videos on YouTube that also display the words. A class favorite is this version of jingle bells. I know you tube can sometimes bring up some scary stuff, so a use a site called safe share that makes all of that stuff go away. I will write more about that soon, but the picture below is from that site.

 

A Fact Family!!!

I have been working with my students the past two week on fact families. We did some activities that I found on other fantastic teaching blogs and a song that I wrote to the tune of the Addam's Family. The kids LOVED that song and we had to video tape it for the music teacher. So I wanted to share it with everyone in hopes that someone may be able to also use it. I use three numbers that form a family in the song, but they could always be changed so that you could review other fact families. Here are some links to the other things I used to help us learn Fact Families:
Fact Family Unifix Trains
Fact Family Ideas
I also used a Fact Family Trains Recording Booklet, but I can't seem to find the blog that it came from. If I do I will post it. Fact Family Song

Skip counting

Wow, I really feel like I am neglecting my blog and my readers since school started. It has just been so crazy around here. Anyway... this week with my 2nd grade math class I worked on skip counting. I also find this a hard area to teach... not sure why. We used a hundreds chart so we could see the patterns when counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. The students also filled out their own hundreds chart and colored or crossed out the numbers that we use when skip counting.

I use a lot of music in my classroom, so we sang skip counting song for counting by 2's and 5's. The 2's song goes to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and the 5's song to the tune of Row, Row, Row your boat. After we sing it over a few days, I give each student a copy of the "words" to put in their math interactive notebooks. I give them the "words" with some blanks so that they have to practice their skip counting. It is always nice to hear them singing the songs. I was going to add the sheet, but it looks like I left the USB at school, so I will add it to a later post. If you would like me to email it to you, just comment below.

While searching for something else to use for them, I came across a youtube video that was a HUGE hit. One of my students was even dancing. I love seeing my students truly enjoying learning.

Music in the classroom Linky Party

Music is a daily occurrence in my classroom. We use it in math, reading, circle time, lining up, washing our hands, etc. For my daily circle time, I make a cd for each month. This CD always includes The Welcome to School Chacha, a song for movement, a song to talk about specific vocabulary or concepts (for example last year we used the yellow song when learning about colors) and either a specific reading or math song. When I started teaching I was introduced to Dr. Jean.



This past school year I was introduced to Jack Hartman.


These two people became my music go to artists. I have also recently discover Teacher Tipster who has a lot of his own songs and demonstrates them on YouTube.



And last but not least I learned about I am a Pizza by Charlotte Diamond this school year as it became on of my students favorite song. She has some great songs.



Link up with me and share: How do you use music in the classroom? Who are your go to artists?