My students are a diverse group of children who enter the music room each week with joy and lots of energy! Each week we spend time together singing, dancing, playing instruments, creating, and reading. Yes, reading in music! Whether we are reading musical notation, poetry, creating word chains for percussion instruments, or stories, we flex our reading muscles daily in the music classroom.
My students love to read and be read to, which is why so many of my lessons involve quality children's literature.
There is always a featured storybook at the front of my classroom each week. Whether we share a story at the beginning of class as a starting point for a lesson, in the middle to help us practice a new musical skill, or at the end to wrap up a lesson, I find myself saying, "I want to share a great story with you today!" many times each week.
My Project
A calming storybook or songtale is a wonderful way to end a high energy music class with our youngest musicians. It gathers the class together and refocuses the attention of the students to a single point while allowing them a moment to rest and simply enjoy! They are the perfect ending for a lesson after singing, dancing, and playing instruments! The songtale storybooks I am requesting are classic folk songs brought to life by early childhood music and movement expert John Feierabend and art students at the University of Hartford. These stories can be enjoyed multiple weeks in a row by first allowing the students to simply listen to the teacher sing while their own imaginations supply the visuals. In later lessons, as students learn the words for the song tale, they take over the singing while the teacher shares the beautiful pictures supplied in these books.
If funded, this project will supply a copy of these books for both the general music classroom and the library at our school, so students will be able to check them out and take them home to share with their families!
Our music classroom already has a copy of some of the stories, which the students have shown to love over the years, so in this case only one copy has been requested. The storybooks will be most utilized in our K-2 lessons in the music classroom, but of course any student is welcome to check them out from the library. A copy of The Book of Songtales for Upper Grades has also been requested for use with our older grades in the music classroom. Thank you for helping to bring the gift of music and literature to our students!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Kostovick and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
