Here is what I’m up to this week! 🙂
Category: Music Camps
Review: Road Trip USA! Camp by Sheryl Welles
My friend Sheryl Welles has just put her RoadTrip USA! camp lesson plans up for sale on her website! She very kindly sent me a copy to review, and so I’m going to tell you all about it. 🙂
RoadTrip USA! is a 159-page pdf that contains detailed descriptions with photos of the games and activities Sheryl does for her camp. Sheryl also includes detailed lists for the supplies you will need each day, as well as some advice about registration forms and setting tuition.
So, what is the camp like? Each day, campers travel to a different part of the United States to listen to different styles of music, learn about composers, and reinforce basic musical concepts, like rhythm and note reading. The five destinations are Washington D.C., New Orleans, the Wild West, New York City, and Hawaii. The activities throughout the day are themed around that day’s destination. I love the great variety of activities (indoors, outdoors, movement, listening, etc!) Sheryl uses for this camp, and your students will love it too! If you haven’t seen Sheryl’s blog before, I highly recommend you check out some of her posts about her music camps. Continue reading “Review: Road Trip USA! Camp by Sheryl Welles”
Musical Olympics Camp – Lesson Plan & Materials
I have finally completed the lesson plans for the Musical Olympics Camp! This pdf is a FREE download from the Printables > Lesson Plans page. Let me give another thank you to Sheryl Welles for her great game ideas, and for her permission to include descriptions of those games in the lesson plan.
This pdf also includes a few new printables I created for the Musical Olympics Camp. I decided to make some of those new printables available for download on the Printables page too, since some of them may easily be used for activities besides the camp. Here’s a list of all the printables:
- Flags – I printed these flags and attached them to 12-inch dowel rods. They were used in the Rhythm Ring Toss game, the Musical Alphabet Noodle Relay, and the Ultimate Rhythm Relay. One side of the flag has notes/rests, and the other has the letters A-G. (Find this printable within the “Musical Olympics Camp” lesson plans.)
2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 4
Here’s some photos to enjoy from our final day of Musical Olympics Camp. Since it was our last day, I invited the students’ parents to come and watch our last hour of camp. We re-played a few of our favorite games from the week, and also had an Olympic Awards Ceremony. More details below.
Our first game was the Ultimate Rhythm Relay, which was a culmination of all the relays we did throughout the week! First, the student tossed the musical beach ball (from yesterday) in the air and complete the musical task it indicated. Then, they ran to the buckets and tossed a beanbag until they got it into a bucket. The buckets were each marked with a note/rest. Last, students ran over to the ring toss area, where they had to toss a ring until they got it over the flag whose note/rest matched the bucket they had tossed their beanbag into. Then students ran back to the starting point to tag the next player. I know it sounds complicated, but these relays are much easier to explain by demonstration than they are to describe in words! Continue reading “2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 4”
2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 3
Here’s some photos to enjoy from Day 3 of my Musical Olympics camp:
Our first game was the Build-A-Keyboard Interval Challenge. To prepare, I drew a large keyboard on the cement for each team using chalk. I gave each team two spinners: a musical alphabet one, and an interval spinner (unison through 5th). Each of the four students on each team had a job: two students held the spinners, and the other two students stood on the starting note on the keyboard and the second note of the interval in order to build interval indicated on the spinner. Teams raced to see how many intervals they could build within 5 minutes. I didn’t get a very good photo of this game, because my husband and I were too busy tracking each team’s points (it’s a fast-moving game!). 🙂 Continue reading “2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 3”
2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 2
We had great weather on Day 2 of our camp last week!
Our first game of the day was Sheryl Welles’ fabulous Musical Alphabet Noodle Relay! For this relay, team members must travel via the noodle to retrieve alphabet flags from the ground and bring them back to the starting point. For the first round, they had to retrieve the flags in order A-G, and the second round they retrieved them backwards. Watching them travel via the noodle was pretty hilarious, I must admit! My students loved this game. Continue reading “2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 2”
2012 Musical Olympics Camp – Day 1
Last week, I held a Musical Olympics camp for my students and it was a great success! We had such a fun week and I received a lot of positive feedback from the students and parents. I will definitely continue doing similar camps in future years!
Over the course of this week, I’m going to be sharing lots of details and photos. At the end of the week, I’ll share a pdf download with more details about the materials and directions for the games. 🙂
Here’s some of the details:
- We met two hours a day, Monday through Thursday.
- I set the time for 10am to 12pm, which was perfect because camp was over before the weather got too warm in the afternoon.
- We were outside for all the games and activities, except for Monday when we encountered rain. I was able to convert some games into indoor games which we did in my garage.
For Day 1 of camp, my wonderful friend Loretta (who lives a couple of hours away) came for a visit to be my camp helper! It was great seeing her again.
Summer Camp Is Here!
This week, I’m holding my first camp of the summer! It’s the Musical Olympics camp, and we had our first day of activities this morning. Unfortunately, it’s been raining all morning so we had to play the games in the garage instead of outdoors. I’m crossing my fingers for better weather the rest of the week, because I’m not sure how many more of the games I have planned can be converted to indoor games. :\ Despite the rain, though, everybody had lots of fun!
I may not be posting here on the blog much until next week — we’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck! 🙂
Summer Music Camp T-Shirts!
The T-shirts for my summer music camps arrived yesterday! I’m so pleased with how they turned out. Take a peek:
The company I ordered the shirts from is CustomInk, and am very pleased with the quality. They even have an artist check out your design to make sure it will look okay when printed.
I have had a number of blog readers contact me asking for more details about my summer camps. Although the June camp is just a couple of weeks away, I don’t feel I have much to share yet! I will most likely be sharing lessons plans afterwards, and, of course, plenty of photos. 🙂
Spell-A-Keyboard Game
This morning with my homeschool music class, I played this game with my students:
As I was lesson planning last night, I was trying to think of a new way to practice the names of the piano keys. My homeschool music class is mostly a music history class, but we’ve been learning basic music/piano concepts too. My students already know how to figure them the piano key names by counting from Middle C, but they need more practice to get them memorized. So I came up with this game, which I called the “Spell-A-Keyboard Game.”
My students loved this game! I gave them each a set of cards with words containing only A-G (I gave them only the three-letter words for today) and a silent keyboard or paper keyboard, and three glass gems (pennies or buttons work too). Then I instructed them to “spell” the words from each flashcard by covering the right keys with glass gems. If you are playing this game with students at the piano, you can require that students spell the letters in order from left to right, but on a silent keyboard there might not be room to do so (as in the example shown in the photo).
This game is a great way to practice the piano key names without it actually feeling like a drill! My students really enjoyed seeing how quickly they could spell the words and were pretty proud of their work each time.
You can download the “Musical Alphabet Word Flashcards” on the Printables > Games page. When I created the cards, I tried to pick mostly words that kids would know. Enjoy!
Update: I just realized that Susan Paradis plays a game very similar to this, except the words are spelled on the staff! Read more here.
Update: Read about the outdoor version of this game here, where I describe my Musical Olympics Camp.
Update: I also found a way to adapt this game to be used with two floor keyboards indoors, with two teams. Click here for more info.
Rhythm Value Cards for Dictation and More
Here they are…the rhythm value cards I mentioned in my post yesterday!
Continue reading “Rhythm Value Cards for Dictation and More”
MTNA 2012 Conference | Session on Composition Camps
The last session of the conference I attended was a wonderful one! It was called:
Get Out of That Musical Box: Teach Students How To Compose!
Dianne Higgins gave a delightful presentation about the summer composition camps she holds each year. It has been a great success even since the first year she tried it!
The first year, Dianne emailed her students and friends to ask for donations of keyboards, headphones, computers, and other equipment she would need. She was surprised with the response she received, and only had a few things left to purchase. Over the years, she has upgraded her equipment and now has 5 computer stations with small MIDI keyboards, and some keyboard/headphone stations too. She has a separate room in her house for these stations. Continue reading “MTNA 2012 Conference | Session on Composition Camps”