One of my new resources

This year at the OMEA, we had clinician John Feierabend. After leaving his workshops I was very excited to have a new, exciting way to incorporate vocal techniques to my students.  I am very fortunate to have a very supportive PTA, so I wrote a proposal outlining everything that I needed and was lucky enough to have had them fund it.   This is a great set of resources.  The one that I was most excited about was the book First Steps in Music:  Preschool and Beyond.  He has a bundle where you can get the book, 4 cds along with 8 other books for extra resources for $165.  He has broken the book down into sections.  He suggests ways to break up the classes into distinct areas such as vocal warm ups, fingerplays and action songs, song tales (my favorite :) , circle games, pitch exporation, movement exploration, call and response and echos.  He even has lesson plans set up for you.  Have I done everything exactly like he has it lined out?  No, I have chosen what works for my particular situation.  My 3rd and 4th graders play recorders, we do vocabulary, literature based activities, orff and technology.  But, this has been a PHENOMENAL resource to pull from. He also has a set of storybooks that go along with some of the song tales.  My students have loved them. We listen to the song, learn the song then we see the storybook.  They are so excited by that point.  One of my favorites in the book is "The Fox".  It was great because after a few class periods I had a 2nd Grade student (who's mom happens to be our school's reading specialist) find a The Fox storybook in his classroom.  I honestly didn't even know that there was one.  I was of course very excited that he and his classmates found it. We then read it in class and they let me borrow it to share with my other classes.  Long story short, check it out it is well worth the investment.