My students need craft supplies such as plastic headbands, pipe cleaners, and pompoms so that they can make their costumes for our upcoming music program titled, "BUGZ."
It's a busy time of year for our music classroom. Multiple grade levels are currently working hard on music repertoire in preparation for upcoming performances. Students play instruments, sing songs, share speaking parts, and move during our concerts.
I'm privileged to teach about 350 eager and captivating elementary students on a daily basis.
We go to a moderately sized urban school that is reaching its capacity limit in a severely low-income neighborhood. Most of my students come from families where English is not their first language for communication and yet, they are determined to excel. A shocking 85 percent of my students come from a devastatingly low socio-economic background. Music allows my students to forget the troubles, ones they should never have to face and opens their eyes to a whole new world of life and creativity.
In my school district, our budget for music resources is incredibly limited. We do the best we can as teachers who love music and teachers who teach children to love music.
My Project
With the plastic headbands, pipe cleaners, and pom pons the students will get to make their very own "antennas." They will wear these bug antennas during their upcoming concert. This part of their costume will help represent what kind of bug they are, for example: Lady Bugs will have the colors black and red. Army Ants will have green and brown. Butterflies, moths, fireflies, caterpillars and other bugs will have a variety of colors.
These costume pieces can also be recycled and reused in future music performances. These materials and this activity will be important because the students will not only take ownership for creating a part of their costume, but they will also learn about work ethic to make a successful finished craft, and they will also have the reward of wearing their piece during the performance.
This project will improve the quality of performance opportunities for my students.
We have a very small budget to purchase necessary curriculum materials and supplemental resources. This budget does not allow for less structured purchases such as props, drama and music productions, or materials/supplies for costuming.
These materials will help enrich the overall performing experience for my students.
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