!!!! 4th Grade Musical !!!!!

Our anual 4th grade musical is tomorrow at 10:00 am in the Red Brick Auditorium. We will be live streaming this production. More info oto come later today!

Mallets and more!

Since most of you never get to come in my classroom, we are going to start with a tour. I am very fortunate to have the support of our district and band program, who as you can see has allowed us to purchase many instruments over the last three years. When I started at SES we had 5 mallet instruments and 40-50 students per class some days. That was a MAJOR challenge! Now we have enough instruments for every child to have an instrument of their own.

We spend a huge amount of time playing mallets. Not only does it develop a sense of independence, teamwork, and motor skills, just to name a few; but also the kids just plain love it. We also play many other instruments. In the picture, you will see hand drums, kazoos, woodblocks, rhythm sticks, egg shakers, tambourines, triangles, and many more. My goal is for EVERY child to get the opportunity  to play EVERY instrument before they leave SES!!

Welcome to my classroom

Welcome to my classroom here at Smithville Elementary. Since I am new to this whole blogging thing, I am going to start with a little about me. I was raised in Odessa, TX, which is where I found my passion in life....music. I joined the band in the 7th grade and have never looked back. While in high school (Odessa Permian) I received many music awards and scholarships. I attended college at Arizona State University where I studied music education. I then returned to Odessa ,TX to begin my teaching career and then spent three years in New Deal, TX. After a 7 year "Mommy" break I came back to teaching at Smithville Jr High where I taught math for 2 years. I then moved to the Elementary where I have been ever since. OK Enough about me...on to my classroom.

Our theme this year is "Soaring to Success" so my room is decorated in Angry Birds, which the kids are truly taken with. I have a lot of things planned for the elementary students this year. Our 4th grade will kick off our performances this year with a musical entitled "Go Fish" on November 8th. Then our third grade will perform "A Christmas Moosical" on December December 6th, and the 5th grade will round out our 2012-2013 performances with "Dig it" on February 28th.

One of the exciting instruments to all of my new students and a source of pride to the older ones is "The Big Bass" (seen below) . This is a wonderful addition to the classroom and really gets some kids excited about music. I will be adding more about this instrument in my next post. Hope you enjoy getting to tour my classroom.