It's back to school time, and that means most teachers are preparing for a new class of students with new learning styles and different classroom dynamics!

As a music therapist in the schools, each summer I wonder how my students will have changed, and I always look for new and exciting ways to engage them for the year ahead. In preparation for the new school year, I wanted to share some "back to school" tips and music activities for the classroom that feature our new Jump and Jive Instructional Package.

These activities can be used in just about any classroom but are especially good for preschoolers and kindergarten classrooms in addition to those classrooms with students with special needs. Our new "Jump and Jive Instructional Package" comes with the Tuned Into Learning CD and book that has songs like "Actions," "Prepositions Rock," "Categories," "Big and Small," "That's The Weather and Colors." All the instruments included in the kit are to help bring these songs to life!

For example, when using the "Prepositions Rock" song, egg shakers can be placed under, over, or next to the drums. Likewise, the scarves can be used in the same fashion. Each student could hold onto a scarf and place the scarf OVER their head, or UNDER their feet, or NEXT TO them as the CD is played. This helps the students have a visual, as well as the auditory, clues!

When working on weather concepts during carpet or circle time, "That's the Weather" can be used. For stormy days, the students can play the drums to imitate the thunder. For rainy days, students can play the rainstick. For windy days, students can use the scarves to imitate the wind!

During the Categories song, students can categorize instruments. The tambourines go together, the drums go together, the drum sticks go together, etc. In addition, the instruments could be categorized by size, shape or color!

As with the remaining songs on the CD, we have included a wide variety of colors, shapes and sizes to work on these concepts. The shape drums are a fun way to have students identify the correct shape, and then they get the reward of being able to play the drum for being correct! Colors are easily worked on with any of the instruments! Students can each have a different color instrument while the teacher randomly calls out colors and asks those colors to stand up, or play their instruments. Or students can wave their scarves when their color is called out.

Of course, the possibilities are endless when it comes to ideas!

If you have discovered other activities while using this kit, please share them with us as we would love to hear! Hopefully, this has helped sparked some new ideas for the new year, and I am sure your students will be Jumping and Jiving all the way to next summer! Have a great year!

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