Tonight was Open House. In preparations, the teacher candidate who is working with me decided we needed Starbucks, so while she was out getting our fortification, I sat and surveyed my room. I said this last year, but I love my room. I love it even more since I minimized…well, as much as a ratpacker such as myself can minimize.
Fixing the Travails of the Falling Boomwhackers
I love the look of Boomwhackers on the wall. I do not, however, like the look of a Boomwhacker space or the clunk that it makes when falling.
After musing how to make the Velcro play nicely together, my friend Betsy Carter came up with a brilliant suggestion: hotglue the Velcro that adheres to the Boomwhacker before attaching it to said Boomwhacker.
Wah-lah!
Colorful walls. And so far, all of the Boomwhackers have stayed up for at least 48 hours. I love this arrangement because I don’t use Boomwhackers very much. This way, I have more floor space, and the kids can get the concept of sizes and pitch. I do have extra Boomwhackers that wouldn’t fit on the wall, which are stored in magazine racks.
This year I also made a switch. Instead of ending up with messiness with my children’s lit, like I had last year:
I moved the children’s lit, in white dollar store bins, to the cabinet you see pictured under the Boomwhackers and moved my instruments to the white bookcases in my room. I sent my 18 year old music series to storage at the administration building and used that bookcase and the children’s lit bookcase for my instruments, which used to be in the cabinet. Last year, during an observation, I was smacked a little for taking too long for first graders to get the instruments out, something that had always bothered me as well. I eliminated a tall metal cabinet I had, threw a lot away, and stored small manipulatives in the cabinet with the children’s literature. I color-coded the children’s literature by these categories: concepts, poetry, songs with stories, stories about music, biographies/reference, books that inspire movement, and oversized books. Thanks to the brilliant idea of my friend Tina Morgan, I used a notecard, put a corresponding colored dot on the card, laminated it, then punched a hole in it and looped it through a book ring. I then looped the book ring through the holes of the basket. I had worked to inventory all my books in Excel, so they were color-coded in there as well. AND, this provided more space for me to stack chairs to have greater movement capacity. All the rearranging yielded a room that looks like this:
(Psst! You can purchase this bulletin board set-up!)
(Vocal Football will soon be updated and available at my TPT store.)
And outside my room: my “What is your music superpower?” board.
I asked teachers and staff to write in their music superpower. Not all of the teachers got a chance to, but I loved the result!
If you have pictures of your room you’d like to share, please let me know. I will post them on a future blog.
Have a great year!
