For a number of years, I’ve posted regularly on my children’s music blog. This is an archive of all my writing about topics related to music for children. Here you can find lots of insights about music and early literacy, as well as wisdom gained from my many years of…
The end of October always brings the delights of the Halloween season! I never tire of singing songs that reflect on classic Halloween themes, and have three that are fairly unique to my own repertoire. The first one is my “Halloween Rhymes” song, which is available on my Songs for…
This is a re-posting of an early blog entry, and remains as relevant as ever. I love making music with kids from infancy through age six, especially pairing music with early literacy learning, which is a natural fit. I once taught at a preschool where the director told me: “Just…
It’s spring! Here in New England, we have a beautiful sunshine-y day outside, daffodils are blooming and everyone’s frolicking and eating popsicles. I’m making a video of a spring song that I wrote with a Pre-K class a few years ago. I plan to post it on my Youtube Channel,…
Memo to musicians under 40, of all musical styles and persuasions: Could you share your music with kids? Please? I’m reaching out especially to those of you who don’t look or sound like me, a white female of a certain age, who strums my acoustic guitar and sings folk-y type…
The story of the Three Bears is a fun way to help children learn about high, medium and low pitches. This idea is not original to me (I’ve referenced some lesson plans below), but I found a way to involve students playing different instruments and repeating lines of the story….
During the summer of 2016, I had lots of adventures. While traveling through the American south, I stopped at the University of Memphis for two weeks to take a course about an approach to music education called Orff. Orff isn’t an acronym, it’s the name of the founder, Carl Orff,…
What follows is an excerpt from a recent interview with Liz on the Lesley University web page. Liz received her M.Ed. degree in 2009 from Lesley’s master’s program in Creative Arts in Learning. 1 In early childhood, use songs and finger plays to encourage learning about rhyming, letter sounds, narrative,…
This school year, I have the pleasure of teaching music to 120 kindergarten students at the newly-opened KIPP elementary school in Lynn, MA. Our school will add a grade each year, so for now, we are all K! It’s great fun. One of the first literacy skills kindergarteners need to…
