Saturday, February 13, 2010

Elementary Children's Music -- Resources

Here is a list of some of the things I've found especially useful in putting together music games, activities and so forth for our little classes (I'll come back and add to this if I think of anything more):

Kodaly Today: A Cognitive Approach to Elementary Music Education -- by Micheal Houlahan/Philip Tacka:  This is a bit heavy on the philosophy and methodology of early music education and teaching, but I love it.  I've learned SO much from it.   I especially like Chapter 4 which has lots and lots of teaching games, circle games and more.  Not only do they describe the games, but they include the music notation as well. I recommend you try to get this from the library (before buying). But since it covers K through 5th grade music classes, it's worth it for me. The appendix has extensive lists of suggested songs for each grade.

Kindermusik, Young Child Home CDs--These aren't as good as other kindermusik CDs, though.  If you find the teacher resource books, however, these are wonderful!! (Perhaps keep your eye on ebay or see if you can look at one from your local kindermusik teacher.)

Wee Sing Games, Games, Games (ours has a cassette with it)

Carnival of the Animals (includes a music CD) -- This book is perfect for kids, it's illustrated beautifully.  We've used it for listening exercises; we've danced to it; we even created costumes and put on a show.

The Story of the Orchestra -- A book and CD; lovely musical selection

CDs: The Story of Bach (Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Haydn and more)  Each CD has a biography of the composer and is quite inexpensive at Amazon (about US $3.00, each)

Be sure to visit http://susanparadis.wordpress.com/ and http://laytonmusic.wordpress.com/ for more wonderful music-related teaching ideas and free downloads of various music games (notes, rhythms, and more). See some of my postings to see examples.

Sheet music and lyrics for children's music and folk songs: http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/allsongs.html

No comments:

Post a Comment