Book Love: If You Ever Want to Bring a Piano to the Beach, DON'T!

I knew this book was going to be perfect for my piano play summer class when I first read the title. I mean, pianos and beaches combined into one silly story? Always funny, but perfect for summer. We loved it!

Connecting Activity: I created a simple piano/beach themed sensory bin to go along with this book. Kinetic sand, sea shells, with foam piano keyboards and musical notes. It could also be fun to "go fishing" for pianos somehow, like she does in the book, using foam pieces, magnets, and string. Lots of fun possibilities! But for this year we enjoyed this little sand bin. Because we'd been learning about the pattern of the piano keyboard, I purposefully made the keyboard pieces with either 2 black keys or 2 white keys, as another way to reinforce that concept. 

Creative Kids Summer Class: Piano Play 2017

We just finished our first session of Creative Kids Summer Class, with our focus topic of the piano. Piano Play is one of my favorite classes to teach, and in the past I've spread out the lessons over 8 (1-hour) class sessions. This year, I condensed and combined many of the topics to fit into 3 (2-hour) class sessions. So it was a little different, but still a lot of fun to spend more time together exploring some basic musical skills and concepts. Here are some of the ways we played with the piano this week!

Exploring Sound

We explored and tried out different kinds of instruments, and made some sound-makers of our own. 

We used water glasses on the light table to explore the sound of different pitches, and created tambourine shakers out of paper plates. 

High and Low Sounds on the Piano

After we spent some time exploring all different kinds of sound, we started talking about differentiating sounds in music and on the piano. We began with listening to and creating high and low sounds. First we tried making them with our voices, and then we discovered how to play higher and lower notes on the piano, using the classic story of the Three Little Bears

We also looked at what high and low looks like on the musical staff as we listened to "The Aquarium" from Carnival of the Animals. In that song, you can hear the notes moving up and down the piano, like fish swimming up and down in the ocean, so we used fish stickers to think about that movement in the music.

. 

Fast and Slow, Loud and Quiet Sounds

We also thought about how music can sound fast, slow, loud, and quiet. A favorite activity during this topic is painting slow or fast depending on the sounds of the music. 

 We also popped some popcorn for a snack, and paid attention to the sounds of the kernels popping. They start slow and more quiet, and then crescendo into fast, loud popping sounds.

Patterns on the Piano Keyboard

We explored the pattern of the piano keyboard, and tried to find certain notes using that pattern.

 We used the felt piano, and a paper collage activity to try to recreate that pattern as well.

The Musical Alphabet

I like to use a silly story about Grandma's house and a doghouse to teach the names of the piano keys. We played a few games to explore the musical alphabet using the giant floor piano.

Musical Notes

We played with long and short sounding notes on the piano, created our own songs, and built some notes out of our snack food (cheese and carrot sticks).

 Musical Books

This class is full of dancing, singing, and instrument playing, but we also spend time reading fun stories that help us to further explore the concepts we are talking about. 

One of our favorite silly books from the session inspired this piano at the beach sensory bin.

End of the Year

The last few weeks of May were so busy with all of the end of year happenings, and I just now realized that I never blogged about any of it. We talked a lot about movement and change and growing, in addition to celebrating all the things we've learned that we can do in preschool. It was a lot of fun! This last year has been a good learning and growing experience for me also, and I loved working with this group of amazing children. I'll be sad to see some of them move on to Kindergarten, but I'm also so excited for them to have more learning adventures. :)

Thanks for a great year!!

Book Love: Butterfly Books

We used quite a few butterfly books as part of our life cycle study this year. Here are a few of our favorites!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
This one is a classic for a reason. Although, I change the word "cocoon" to "chrysalis" when I read it. :) There are so many fun ways you can connect to this text, from counting to story retelling to art.

Ten Little Caterpillars
I love that this book explores the life of a caterpillar, and the many different varieties that there are. Students can connect to the experiences in the book, particularly the one where a caterpillar is taken to school in a jar. This is also a great book for connecting to math. Plus Lois Ehlert's illustrations in this book are so delightful.

A Butterfly is Patient
This is a beautifully illustrated informational text about butterflies. I don't always read it word for word when I use it with my preschool classes, but I love the descriptive phrases and incorporate that into our entire study. "A butterfly is patient, a butterfly is creative, a butterfly is magical..." We used that same format to describe the caterpillars: "a caterpillar is hungry...spiky...wiggly" and the chrysalis: "a chrysalis is quiet...still...bumpy."

Waiting for Wings
We read this one on the day we released our butterflies, and my students were so excited to notice that it features a Painted Lady Butterfly- the type we'd been raising! This book also goes through the butterfly stages of the butterfly life cycle, but spends a little bit more time with what happens after they are butterflies. And once again, I love Lois Ehlert's style of illustration and the way she labels them to bring attention to the realistic nature of her work.

Photographic Nonfiction Books
I have some informational books I've collected over the years that are no longer being sold, but I love using books that have actual photographs in them as well. There are so many out there that would provide the same kind of experience. :)

Other Fun Butterfly Books
There are so many books about butterflies out there. We didn't get to these ones this time around, but they could also be fun to check out if you want to continue to explore these amazing insects!

We also created our own butterfly books as we observed our caterpillars grow and change into butterflies. I love the different ways that children represent their thinking and observations at this stage of writing.
Caterpillars

Life Cycle


Butterflies