January 15, 2012

Coffee Talk Sunday: Beat the Winter Blues

First things first. MAKE MY MOTHER PROUD OF ME AND VOTE FOR Art Project Girl AS ONE OF THE TOP TEN ART BLOGS OF THE YEAR at The Art of Education.

Now back to our regularly scheduled post. . .

One way I try to ward off the winter blues is by having music on. All the time.  In my house I try to have something playing to inspire me to relax or get moving or sing to Stella. So why not in the classroom?


I think one of the reasons I don't play more music in my classroom is because mix "tapes" (yes I'm from the 80's) are really hard to make for kids. You want something happy, upbeat, relaxing, cool, but it has to be appropriate. It's harder then it sounds!

So here are some of the songs my kids voted to have on our mix "tape" that I could actually use! These are all clean, wholesome and cool (by elementary 4th and 5th grade standards) songs.

Who Says? Selena Gomez
A Year Without Rain Selena Gomez
Stereo Hearts Gym Class Heroes ft. Adam Levine
Firework Katy Perry
Dynamite Rokstarr Taio Cruz
Rock and Roll Sounds Like This
Chasing Pavements Adele
anything adele everyone loves adele.

KEEP THE LIST GOING ADD YOUR FAVORITE KIDS MIX SONG IN THE COMMENTS!
There's nothing better then seeing a whole class of kids working and humming along together while making art. 


Note* I was streaming Pandora but think it might not be good for the networks bandwidth (or whatever that is called) so I have been using CD's more. 



5 comments:

Unknown said...

Erica,

You are very kind to let the kids nominate songs for your mix CD's. I'm not so nice......I only play new age, classical and relaxation music because I have found that it keeps the noise level down to bearable levels. I also just signed up for a free week of XM radio that I can stram through my school laptop-Brilliant! I have XM in my car but am seriously thinking about adding it at home as It is affordable and you get the added bonus of NO COMMERCIALS!Yay!Sorry, didn't mean to go off on a toot!:)Pat

Unknown said...

Yes Pat I should mention I have my Putumayo cd's too. When they earn it they listen to the mix:) Like a reward and I turn it off if they start talking loud.

I have an XM radio but never bought the plan I think that's what I need right? How do you know what you'll get on XM though?

Katie Morris said...

Yours was one of the blogs I nominated! I told Jessica I appreciate how you encourage dialogue and problem solving (as opposed to acting like everything is perfect all the time!)

Phyl said...

I love love love Putumayo CD's and the kids do too, especially the World Playground ones. They also like the Harry Potter soundtrack.

My Ben always made me mix CD's for school but since he's not hardly ever home, mine are getting old.

I used to stream Pandora all the time at home when working on the desktop computer but a week ago we got a nasty worm that made it go nuts. We had to call in the "computer guy" and he said it probably came through the ad banner on Pandora. He'd seen it before. So now I'm very cautious about it.

Kristina said...

I love to play movie soundtrack in my art room. Amelie, The Hours, and Little Miss Sunshine are favorites. You have to preview soundtracks, though, because sometimes throngs are too weird and will just make the kids laugh, and sometimes the songs seem too "scary" for the younger grades (like Maria''s).