Music Room Setup

Music room Set up: It’s the beginning of school, and I thought I would post pictures of my Music room set up. I’m very blessed to be in a wonderful private school setting with a really nice, large room. Fresh start: At the beginning of each year, I try to rearrange everything just so it makes it fresh for the kids…. and me! I’ve discovered so many beautiful touches to classrooms through Pinterest… I’m afraid I’m not much on the cute side. I would rather be working on a Smartboard lesson than creating cute. However, I do like to be organized as much as possible. I’d like to show you some classroom ideas that are working for me. Music Room Set Up I like to be able to see my schedule from everywhere in the room Music Room Set Up: Schedule: I recreated my daily music schedule in WORD and enlarged it so I can see it from everywhere in the music room. Music Room Set Up: Bulletin board  All the attention is toward my SMARTBoard, but the two bulletin boards on either side are used to work on current lessons. We’re singing the Star Spangled Banner for the upcoming HS Football game and we’re learning where to breathe correctly. Music Room Set Up: Inspiration  This verse in Colossians is my favorite and inspires be to put my whole heart into teaching every child that walks through my door! I like for my music room set up to inspire the kids give their best. I’ll lead the way! Storage using dish pans works for me. Music Room Set Up: Storage Adding a strip of wood on the side of each shelf created a running track for the dish pans. They now stack on top of each other and slide out easily.  Most of the rhythm instruments are stored in these dish pans. My students can easily identify them and get what they need without my help. Music room set up is fun. This is the “Sofa”wall in the music room. Music Room Set Up: Teaching wall space One wall in my music room is for reading notes. It includes the Curwen hand signs, the notes on the staff (key of C) and recorder fingerings. My kids call this the “Sofa” wall because of the Solfege. If you would like these Sol-Fa children images, you may download them at the end of this post. I just enlarged these images on tabloid paper and colored them, then made the long staff  paper and created the recorder fingering posters in Illustrator. If you would like the recorder images, you may download them at the end of this post. Every spot in the Music room has a purpose and a name. Download the Line Girl and Space Boy images at the end of this post. ( updated 3.19.17) Music Room Set up: Storing Charts Even though most of my teaching is done via the SMARTBoard, I still have teaching posters, etc. that I need to organize. By adding extra “L” brackets, I was able to add extra shelves to this metal piece and it has worked beautifully for keeping everything separated. The Music Rules (Hot-glued to this sentence strip pocket) cover the unsightly shelves during the day. I used a dish towel to make this simple chair bag. Risers: The music room is large enough to set up five riser sections and still have room for movement in the front of the room. Makeshift Desks: By putting the chairs behind the risers, we are able to create a desk for the children. Scarves, rhythm sticks, and instruments are laid out before the children arrive. At the signal, they can go to the risers and pick them up. Chair Bags: On the other hand, I sewed a cloth pocket bag for each chair that holds sticks, scarves, bean bags, etc. if we are using chairs in a circle. Options: Having options and extra room really makes the class time flow much more smoothly. The glockenspiel are used with Recorder Karate students. We have other Orff instruments stored in the hallway. The blue crate above the orange Glocks hides my snack stash! Can you tell I’m a pack-rat? I find and use so many things the other grades throw away each year. The clipboards, the magazine holders, the pipe-cleaners, the empty folders… all reclaimed trash! Thanks for taking the tour! ( updated 3.19.17) Check out this post about music room storage!!  https://www.cphmusic.net/2016/06/music-room-setup-ideas.html