Feeling a little Orff today...

One of my goals for this year is to incorporate more time for actually making music.  To create rather than follow along, especially when it's something the kids are coming up with themselves.  To that end, I decided that the best way to get more playing time was to have my room set up such that the instruments are more accessible.  Unfortunately my room really isn't spacious, so coming up with a way to have all of my Orff instruments set up all the time is an ongoing battle.  For the moment, what I have done is flip some of the major components of my classroom to the other side of the room, spread some of the larger furniture out, and make things fit where they can.

It's still a work in progress.

However, I have had some initial success with the setup, though it requires constant tweaking at this stage.  Here is one of my fourth grade classes enjoying their instrument time.

I didn't cover up anyone's face, this is how they all really look! :)

I have 3 glockenspiels, 2 soprano xylophones, a soprano metallophone, 3 alto xylophones, an alto metallophone, 2 bass xylophones and a bass metallophone.  Since there obviously aren't enough mallet instruments for everyone, I've been having the kids that weren't on mallets play Boomwhackers.  I was playing the conga to (try to) keep everyone together on the steady beat.  Surprisingly, I'm finding that what I play has to be a bit more complicated and rhythmic for it to have any bearing on what the kids do. And unfortunately what they do almost without exception is speed up.  A lot.  So the more I play something resembling a rock or funk groove the more likely they are to stick with one tempo.  Go figure.

And speaking of Boomwhackers, I have finally found a good way to store mine.  A huge thanks to Pinterest! Ok, so really it is from Music With Mrs. Dennis, who got it from Rainbows Within Reach.  But Pinterest was where I saw it first. The school where I used to teach had two complete classroom sets of boomwhackers, which was glorious.  The other music teacher at the school had hers stored in a tall plastic wrapping paper bin that resembled a tall skinny trash can.  I liked the idea, but felt that there had to be a better way.  While the bin kept everything protected, it took a little more work to get the Boomwhackers in and out than I would like.  When I changed schools, I was thrilled to find a class set of Boomwhackers in my classroom.  But they were stored in a large Panera bag.  I still get irked thinking about that darn bag (and not just because someone went to Panera without me!). For a year I fought with it, it got mangled and slightly more ripped than it was.  And that just won't do.  So naturally, I turned to the internet for a solution.

Cereal boxes!  Go figure! I brought three boxes from home (ok, one is a cereal box, one is for fruit snacks, and the other was for Tabasco flavored Cheez Its - YUM!), and put out an email to the staff asking for donations.  So far two teachers have donated to the cause, so now I only need one more box!  I folded the top flaps inward, which hold the Boomwhackers upright and in place.  The cereal/fruit snack/Cheez It boxes keep them separated by color and all organized.

 

I put the smaller boxes into an empty printer paper box.  Further proof that there are better things than the trashcan.  Once I get  the last cereal box I need I will organize the boxes by size so that the larger Boomwhackers are in the bigger boxes, so on and so forth.  Then I'm planning on putting color coordinated construction paper on each box to make it obvious where each color goes.  Last I will probably coerce ask someone more artistic than myself (probably the Art teacher!) to decorate the outside of the newly paper-clad big box. I might even have some of the kids do it.  Hmm.....  Regardless, the best thing about this particular box is that it fits into the hideous yellow cabinet in the background of the picture, so it will help store my Boomwhackers out of sight when needed!

So at the end of the day yesterday, I stood back and looked at my room.  And it was a minor disaster.  Between the bits of trash that seem to stick to kids just long enough to get in my room, the odds and ends that kids forgot to take with them (I'm pretty sure I could open a thrift store), and the instruments strewn about, something had to be done. 

So I spent 30 minutes of my Friday afternoon (after the duty day was over!) to put things in some semblance of order.  Again.

So far this is the best I've come up with.  Everything is oriented toward the Promethean board, spaced out such that the kids can all fit behind the instruments, and arranged by instrument type.  The only problem now is that this takes up more than 1/3 of my room.  If I were to leave it like this, I would have students sitting on top of glockenspiels and xylophones when they sit in their usual spots.  That's a no go.

For right now, the solution is just to have the kids tuck everything back against the bass instruments when we're not using them.  I hate that, but it's really the only way to have them out all the time.  My plan is to build carts for all of the instruments (minus the glockenspiels) so that we can just roll them into place.  Hopefully I can also incorporate storage for the bars we're not using and the mallets, too.  I got the idea from Crafty Music Teachers, and look forward to adapting their design to my needs.  But that will be for a later post.