Go In Peace

I took some time this Labor Day weekend to record my little song "Go In Peace" with my two older kids. I wrote this song last year as an exit song for our weekly Meeting for Worship time in the Lower School (oops! I say "yearly" on the video. I was quite distracted by my 1-year-old busy destroying the house off-screen). Here it is:

The lyrics:
Go in peace, go in peace
With this blessing in your heart
May your light shine brightly wherever you are.

Go in peace, go in peace
May this silence teach us grace
To help each other make the world a better place.

Feel free to use this song if it works for you, but please let me know in the comments!

Staying Organized with Evernote

*note: I wrote this post because I have used Evernote for years and truly think it's an amazing tool. I have no affiliation with the company and this post is based entirely on my personal experience.

I'm always telling everyone about my very favorite organizational tool, Evernote, but somehow I've never written about it other than a mention in my post about my PLN workflow. One of Evernote's greatest features is that it is just as simple or as complex as you need it to be. Google "Evernote and..." and you'll find thousands of ideas of how to use it in any context you can imagine. Here's a screenshot from Evernote on my Mac:

And here's why I find it so awesome:

Recorder Tunes and Tracks at Teachers Pay Teachers

Over the summer, I've gotten to know the popular site Teachers Pay Teachers. Kind of like Etsy, it is most valuable if you have some time to spend combing through resources to separate the truly useful/relevant materials from the fluffy–but I suppose that is true of any teacher supply/curriculum resource! There is quite a lot of great stuff on there for music educators, from bulletin board ideas for the non-crafty (that would be me) to printable songs and entire curricula. It's a fabulous opportunity for creative teachers to share the resources they've worked so hard on without having to write a whole book and find a publisher. Check it out!

As an experiment, I've just created a store myself. I've listed some reproducible recorder songs with accompaniment tracks. Two of them are FREE! If you play or teach recorder, I'd love your feedback. Enjoy!

Lesson Plans and Resources for the New School Year

It's that time of year... Everywhere I look I see music teachers posting questions about lesson plans, preferably inexpensive or FREE! I like to change up my activities every year–both because I have combined-age classrooms and would need at least a 2-year cycle to avoid students repeating the same curriculum, and because that's just how I roll! This year will be the first year I've had the Quaver's Beyond Marvelous Curriculum for the entire school year (I gradually rolled it in last year, starting in October), but because I see my kids twice weekly, and because I obsessively customize any curriculum I use, AND because I spend a lot of time following the lead of my students, I'm constantly looking for new ideas anyway.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of online resources. These are simply the resources I've used the most, and a great jumping-off point for teachers looking for new ideas. Most blogs have a handy-dandy "blogroll" on the sidebar linking to THAT teacher's favorite blogs and resources for further exploration. So here are some of my favorites: