The Power of Music

Music is a super powerful tool for learning. When I was little my mom would put my spelling words into songs becuase that was the only way I would remember them! And this old commercial jingle is the only reason I know how to spell bologna:

When I was in third grade we learned a song that contained all 50 states in alphabetical order, and wouldn’t you know it, I can still sing the whole song today! In fact, I teach that song to my third graders now.

I got a lovely email from a parent about this song:

Christie, I hope you had a nice long weekend! Thank you so much for the 50 state song. We were blessed with our son singing it every day, all day since Friday. We decided to ski yesterday in part so we could wear our helmets to block out his beautiful singing voice. This reminded my wife and I of years ago when Wiggles songs would get stuck in our heads for weeks on end. You can ask him to sing it for the class as he has it down pat!!! 😉 Thanks for all you do and caring so much about the kids!

And that same kiddo went home and found a bunch of cool videos about the states to share with our class. Here is one of them!

There are learning songs online about almost everything.

Astronomy:

Long Division:

Ancient Rome:

If you’re about to tell me you’re not really a singer, get over that, your kids will not care, and start singing! 🙂

Tagxedo

Bone bone bone bone bone bone muscle muscle muscle muscle muscle muscle muscle tibia tibia knee knee Ribcage Ribcage Ribcage Ribcage Ribcage Ribcage movement movement skeleton skeleton skeleton skeleton skeleton skeleton skeleton calcium tissue broken-bone broken-bone patella femur bicep bicep bicep triceps joint joint joint joint ulna ulna radius tendon humerus compact-bone spongey-bone marrow medullary-cavity periosteum carpals wrist skull skull skull humerus collarbone heel fingers shoulder exercise exercise strong strong strong abs spine heads legs legs legs teeth foot hands arms arms heart elbow 

That looks like a very odd assorted blurb of words. I had my kids at the beginning of our human body unit write down any word they could think of that has to do with bones and muscled. (Some of them used their resources. I already had a few posters up on my walls.) And then I put their reponses into a word cloud using Taxgedgo. We’ll do this again at the end of the unit. This is a great visual to show how much we learned!

There is a slight flaw in this system. It got the text from my blog post, and it included a few extra words like the title of my blog and all the months down the right side of my archives.