In today's episode, we're diving into the exciting world of drumming activities in the elementary music classroom. Join me as I explore creative and interactive ways to incorporate drums and rhythm into your lessons. Get ready to make some noise and spread happiness through music!

Planning a drum unit requires some careful planning. I'll provide you with a list of essential questions to consider before you start designing your unit. I start out talking about questions to ask yourself before designing your drum unit.

Next, I'll give you some prepping tips to think about as you plan.

Finally, you'll get 5 ideas about how to use drums/drumming activities in your classroom, even if you don't have drums!

1. Using Drums in Storybook Lessons:

Discover the magical combination of literature and percussion. Learn how to bring stories to life by incorporating drums into your lessons. We'll explore how drumming can ignite your students' imaginations, deepen their engagement with the story, and reinforce important concepts in a fun and memorable way.

2. Drumsticks or Rhythm Sticks on Your Chairs:

No drum set? No problem! Find out how simple chairs and drumsticks or rhythm sticks can transform your classroom into a rhythmic playground. We'll share exciting techniques and exercises that allow your students to explore beats, develop coordination, and experience the sheer joy of drumming.

3. Drum Circles:

Let's create a harmonious rhythm community through drum circles! Discover the power of this inclusive and collaborative activity. We'll provide tips on organizing drum circles, fostering a positive and supportive environment, and nurturing teamwork and creativity through rhythm conversations. Get ready to spread happiness through the collective heartbeat of your students!

4. Creating a Drum Piece Using a Pop Song:

Who says drumming can't be contemporary and fun? Learn how to create a drum piece using a popular song that will have your students grooving with excitement. We'll guide you through the process of selecting appropriate songs, designing drum parts, and adding rhythmic variations to create an infectious and memorable musical experience.

5. Using Found Instruments:

Unleash your students' creativity and resourcefulness by exploring the world of found instruments. We'll show you how everyday objects can become unique percussive instruments. Discover the joy and educational possibilities of incorporating found instruments into your drumming activities, fostering imagination and musical exploration.

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What was mentioned:

FREE masterclass, Teaching Music to Students with Autism, ADHD, and Other Special Needs

Drumming Lesson plan for Love Runs Out, by One Republic.

Drum Dream Girl, by Margarita Engle (my Amazon affiliate link)

Read aloud of Drum Dream Girl.

Amazon carries plastic drums sticks, and my favorite, TUBZ. If you really want to get fancy, it’s fun to use light up drum sticks! (my Amazon affiliate links)

This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcast at www.teachbetterpodcastnetwork.com. Now let's get onto the episode. One of the biggest challenges to being a music teacher is that we get all the kiddos, and that means we get students that have challenges that we may not feel equipped to deal with.

That's why I have a free masterclass coming up to help you feel more comfortable with those kiddos who have special learning challenges. It's called Teaching Music to students with Autism, adhd, and other special needs. And in this masterclass, I am gonna give you my favorite secrets for how I teach my students who are uniquely made and who have special learning challenges. Wanna learn more?

All you have to do is go to stories that sing.net/free masterclass to sign up. Again, that is stories that sing.net/free masterclass. See, Happy music teacher. Are you an elementary music teacher who's frustrated and overwhelmed? I'm Jeanette Shorey Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day, but it wasn't long ago, I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom.

What do you think it is about drums that just captivates literally every student? I'm not sure. I mean, do you think it's the fact that they're loud? Do you think it's the fact that most percussionist and drummers look really cool? I mean, I don't know what it is. It's kind of one of those things. I mean, I understand it because I think drums are cool too.

And anytime I have an opportunity to play, of course I'm gonna play like I am the first one up there when I'm doing a workshop that's like, yes, yes, I'll play the drums. So you know it, it's, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but definitely drums are, at least in my student's opinion, the coolest instrument.

So I have this one student, well actually I've got a couple students in my special ed class who we do drumming circle every week. And I at this point have to be really careful not to sit next to him because I swear I'm losing hearing sitting next to him. I mean, he is so loud. And that's the other thing that you know, and, and no matter what I say, you know, he's on the autism spectrum, so he just doesn't always respond the way I want him to. Even if I'm going quiet hands, quiet hands. But that tends to be the case with most of our kiddos, right? So it's kind of like a double-edged sword. It's kind of like you love the drums,

you love drumming, you love getting them out, but then there's that part of you that's like, oh my gosh, do I really wanna do this? So this is International Drum month. I don't know if you knew that, but that is the truth. And I think that drumming is such an important part of the elementary school music teacher's life. It is exciting always.

It doesn't matter what song you're playing, you can bring out what your students consider the Hokiest song and they are still going to love playing it. So when I think of drumming, I think of it as beat. And I think of the all importance of beat. As you know, as a music teacher, the steady beat is the most important part of the music.

I like to think of it like a cake plate. So imagine you've got this delicious chocolate cake with double fudge icing, and imagine that you put it on the counter. I, this is the story I tell my students. Imagine you put it on the counter and you go to pick it up. What's gonna happen to it? Oh my gosh, it's gonna all fall apart.

You need to have a cake plate. And this is the analogy that I like to use without the cake plate. You can't pick up the cake and carry it, it's just gonna fall apart. Imagine the mess Steady Beat is just like that. Without the steady beat, the song is going to fall apart. So I always like to tell my kiddos if we've got a couple different parts going on,

and let's say we're doing an Orff ensemble, an orchestration, I will say to my kiddos that are playing the Steady Beat, I want you to know that you have the most important part. Because sometimes they're like Missouri, we're playing the same thing over and over and it's so boring, it's just quarter notes, whatever. And I'm always like, it's not boring.

It's the steady beat. It's like that cake plate. The whole song will fall apart without you. This is the most important part. So because steady beat is all important, it's also most important to include it in every lesson, especially with our littles. And I know this is, I'm preaching to the choir here, right? So what is the best way to do that?

While I think percussion instruments and especially drums this month, I'd like you to think about all the ways you can add drums to your activities. I'm gonna give you a moment. How many did you think of? I mean, my list goes on and on and on. I may not be able to come up with them super fast, but I am always going to come up with some today I have five for you.

But before I give you the details on that, you're gonna need to ask yourself a few important questions. First of all, what kind of drums, what kind of drums do you have in your classroom? I have congas and I have frame drums and I have a couple of cas or box drums and I have cups. I love cups. Cups are my favorite.

And you know, and I consider those drums because we can use them the same way we use our drums. What kind of drums do you have? It doesn't really matter what kind of drums you have. Your kids are gonna be excited to play any of the drums as long as you have enough for everyone. So what if you don't have drums? Well,

if you don't have drums, you've got some options. Home Depot, Lowe's, your cafeteria sometimes has giant plastic buckets. A lot of times you can ask them to donate them. And you can also use other types of percussion instruments. So if you don't have drums and you don't have bucket drums and you really wanna do something right away, you can use plastic plates,

you can use paper plates. Those work in a pinch along with some dowels or rhythm sticks. Rhythm sticks. Or you can even use dowels or rhythm sticks and play the floor, play your chairs if you have them. And if none of those options really works for you, then you could try using red solo cups, your belly drum or your lap.

So lots and lots of options. Now what kind of drumsticks should you use? There are many schools of thought here. So some music teachers like to use recorder cleaning sticks, and I think this is a good option, but you have to be really careful with those because they can have sharp edges. So you don't wanna use those on like your fancy conga drums.

You wanna use those on things like your frame drums. You wanna use them on things like your red solo cups, that sort of thing. They are awesome for when you don't wanna leave with a headache. Some people like rubber pencil grips. You can use rhythm sticks or lummi sticks. Those work well with bucket drums, but you have to be sure you don't use those for any other kind of drums because you'll end up with teeny tiny little rhythm stick sized holes.

I know this because I've done it, so I had to replace one of my Congo drum heads because we were using, we actually were using real drumsticks and apparently Congos do not like real drumsticks. Now I've also heard about music teachers using bamboo sticks that you can get in the garden center of like Lowe's or Home Depot, Walmart, that sort of thing.

Dowels, you can use dowels wrapped in tape. That's gonna be better than using dowels that are not wrapped in tape because again, you don't want those sharp edges. You can also paint your dowels with neon so that they light up in the black lights. And Amazon carries a bunch of different options. They have plastic drumsticks, which is awesome, and they're in all different colors.

And my favorite is tubes. That's spelled T U B Z. Now if you really wanna get fancy, then it's really fun to use light up drumsticks and you can find those on Amazon as well. I am going to link to the plastic drumsticks, the tubes, and the light up drumsticks in case you would like to do that. Those are affiliate links,

by the way, from Amazon. Now what if you don't have enough drums? So that's pretty easy because if you don't have this enough of the same kind of drum, you can mix and match. So if you don't have enough of your tub bonos or your congas, then you can use some tub bonos or congas and you can use some frame drums.

If you only have frame drums but you don't have enough of those, then you can use some frame drums and some red solo cups. What if you don't have enough and you don't have like another option? Then your best bet would be get out your rhythm sticks. And some people can play the floor while some people are playing the drums, either with their hands or with a mallet or with drumsticks,

that sort of thing. So if you don't have enough, be creative and just figure a way to do it. Your kids are not going to be upset as long as they get to play the drums at some point. So those are some questions that you want to ask yourself. Now the next thing you wanna do is you want to plan ahead. You wanna make sure that you've got your drums all set up in the right way.

I love to use a drum circle, so I'll set up my chairs because if you're drumming, you really kind of have to have chairs. I mean, I guess if you're using frame drums, you don't have to have chairs. But if you're drumming and you're using Congos or tub bonos or something like that, your kids are not gonna wanna stand up for a full 30 minutes.

So you can set up your chairs in a circle, or if you don't have chairs, maybe you can put down some dots. And in that case, maybe they stand up and sit down, that sort of thing. Or if you're using frame drums, they can sit down and you just have to make sure that everybody is in that circle. So the best thing to do is either put down dots or put down lines or tape marks or something like that so that you've got a nice circle so that your kiddos can do that.

Now if you have like a brainstorm and you're like, oh my gosh, I wanna do my drum circle and I haven't set anything up, then my favorite way to get my kiddos into a circle is I will say to them, stand up, use your force field hands, and I want you to make a circle using your force field. Hands and force field hands are hands where you're not like my fourth and fifth graders do not wanna hold hands.

So what I'll do is I'll have them, I wish you could see me right now cuz I'm demonstrating like you can see me. So you put your hands up at your side and each hand is facing away from you. So that means that everybody is, has their hands facing away and you, you kind of do like, okay, you're going to almost touch hands,

but the force field is gonna keep you away from each other. So that's a good way. With my littles, I'll have them hold hands, but with my big kids, we'll do force field hands. And then that is to me, the very best way to make a circle. And what I'll do, even with my kiddos, my bigger kiddos,

is I'll be like, let's Make a circle a great big circle. Let's make a circle and Have some fun. So that is my best way, and we will sing that over and over and my kids will start singing it too. Sometimes my big kids will start talking, and if they do start talking, I'm like, wait, stop everybody sing along,

let's make a circle. And we, we all have to sing. If we don't sing, we stop, we wait, we try again. Three times they try again, and then we're done. We're not making the circle, we're not playing drums. And I am really specific about that. We will still do the activity, but we're not going to use the drums at that point.

And my kids know that. When I say it, I mean business. So you are planning how you want your kids to sit, and you are going to make sure that you have everything set up before they come into the room. The next step is when my kids are outside, I'm gonna say to them, boys and girls. So that's my,

I can't remember what movie that's from, but my kids think it's hysterical. So I always am like I I do like a, a little no no finger. And I do that even with my fifth graders and they love it. And little aside, a couple of years ago, I, you know, I always do that in. So a couple years ago I had a fifth grader who bought me a llama coffee cup.

And it was the most adorable thing and I loved it so much. And then one day I had like a breaking week, do you ever have a breaking week? And I dropped my llama cup in the sink and I broke it. And then I had, and I was so sad. And then I had a, this bowl that I made, it was like a soup bowl,

and I dropped that also. And this was a bowl, like I had made it in a ceramics class and I had painted it with all these musical notes and everything. Oh my gosh, I was so upset. So of course I wasn't able to replace the bowl, but I did search on Google, you gotta love Google. And I was like,

llama coffee cup. And wouldn't, you know, target had been selling them that year. And I found one on Etsy and I think I paid like $20 for it, but I was like, I need to have it back. So anyway, that was a total aside. But as the students are coming in, they know because I've told them they are not allowed to touch the drums.

So I'll be like, no touchy, no touchy, bad llama, no touchy. And then I'll say, boys and girls, as you're coming in, I will lead them in and they're like little ducklings behind me and I lead them to a spot and they just fill in the drums. So that is the best way, the drums. So that,

that is the best way to get them in. They, they follow me like little ducklings, and they go around because they're not used to sitting in a circle because we don't usually do that. So that is how I get them in. And I'll say to them before they come in, after I do my no touchy, no touchy, I will say to them,

make sure you don't touch. If you need to sit on your hands, if you need to fold your hands, whatever you have to do, so that your hands do not play those drums. And again, they know I mean business because if they do touch, then they have 10 minutes of timeout. I call it the drum has 10 minutes of timeout.

I never put my students in timeout. I put my instruments in timeout, and that is not my idea. I stole that from somebody I don't know who. So that is how you've got your room set up. You've got your, you've got your rules as you're going in. And then the next step is to go over all of the things, the important things that you want.

So I'll say to my kiddos, we've got the head of the drum and the head of the drum. If you don't know, this is in the center of the drum. And I call it the, the hand that plays the head and the hands that play the rim. And we've got our, our hands that play the rim. And we've got our hands that play the head and the hand that plays the head is cupped.

And I'll have them imagine that there's a little baby chick and they don't wanna mush the chick. So that is how, and, and then I'll talk about bouncing and we'll talk about, ooh, it's a hot stove, or we'll talk about bouncing high and bouncing low and how it's never a bang, it's always a bounce. And then we use the hands for the rims.

And the hands for the rims are basically the fingertips from the knuckle up. And your thumbs just hang off. And again, I wish you guys could see me, but the, the hands are like flopping around. And I'll be like, these are my floppy hands. And when you're playing the drums, you want your floppy hands. So we will bounce off the rim of the drum,

that's the outside of the drum, and then I start echoing and every time they come in, we do some echoing. So that is my procedure for playing the drums. And I thought I would share it with you. Now, I have five drumming activities to share with you. I have so many more drumming activities, but these are five of my favorites.

So the first one, of course, because I'm the stories that sing Lady is storybook lessons. I love to add drums to storybook lessons when it's appropriate. So the one I'm gonna talk to you about today is Drum Dream Girl by Margarita Engel. And this is included in my news stories that sing to book, my resource book that will be coming out soon.

And I can't wait for you to get a copy. And this is obviously, I mean, listen to the title Drum Dream Girl, obviously perfect for adding some drumming. So I read the story first, and then we go over the sound words and any sound word. Sound word is something that you hear, a sound in your head when you hear it.

So tap a tap, tap or wind wavy drums or booming or pounding, those types of things. So some of those words are in that storybook. And so we'll read the story all the way through. Fabulous story. By the way. I'm not gonna go into all the details on it, but it is a fabulous story. And you can listen to a read aloud.

In fact, I will link a read aloud on YouTube. And on YouTube it is a read aloud on YouTube that I will link in the show notes is what I was trying to say. I got distracted. And so you are gonna want to read through all those sound words. And then if you've got littles, what I like to do is I like to model the sound words on my drum.

If you've got big kids, what I'll do is we'll talk about all the sound words. Words. We do a picture, walk through the story, we'll talk about the sound words, and then I'll have my students, my big kids, like my third, my fourth, my fifth graders play the drums. And we're gonna explore many ways to play the drums before we do this activity.

So either you're modeling or with your big kids, you're asking them to model. And I'll do like everybody plays together. If they get too loud, we stop, we revise. But everybody plays together. So I'll have them do a drum, something with their drums, and I'll say, okay, keep a steady beat. Now change the way you're keeping the steady beat.

What is another way you can play your drums? And I'll let them go for that. And we'll go on and on and on. And then we go through and we talk about those sound words, and I'll ask them to improvise. So you're talking about improvisation too, win win. And I'll ask them to improvise the drums on their drums, on the sound words on their drums.

Oh my gosh. So that is the first one. Storybook lessons number two, if you don't have drums, this is a fantastic way to deal with it. So I like to use chairs and drumsticks. I will actually have my students turn their chairs around backward and use the backs of the chairs as their drums. Now you need to make sure to emphasize bouncing softly,

bouncing low and soft so that nobody leaves with a headache. And I love to use the chairs as the drum. And we can do some echoing activities and that sort of thing. Or you can do some, you know, you can just make up some rhythms or, you know, lots of different stuff like that. Number three, my all time favorite activity after storybook lessons,

of course is a drum circle. So, and, and I already told you a little bit about it, so you can do almost anything in a drum circle. And one of the things that I like to do is use Will Smith's activities. So he's got some activities in one of his books and it, it's like, what's your name? What's your favorite color?

So you ask the question and they answer. So it would be like, what's your name? Sally, what's your name? Will, what's your name? Jeremy, you know, that kind of thing. And I always start by asking the question first and they answer. And we don't do any playing. Then I ask the question and we do body percussion.

Then I ask the question and I ask and play it. And then they ask and play it back. So you can use like, what's your name? You can use what's for dinner, you can use, what's your favorite subject, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Whatever you want to do. I mean, you could go on and on,

you could have like a three part drumming series, all with that kind of stuff. And then what you do next is you drop the words. So be like, Okay, so it sounds like you're doing a a drum ensemble. Just one of the many things that you can do in a drum circle. Another, this is number four, well loved drumming activity.

My kiddos love it anyway, is I love to pull out a pop song and create a drum piece for it. So I'm gonna create basic rhythms. I divide the song up, I divide it into the chorus, the verse, and the bridge. And I create a different rhythm for each part. And I mean, this is a win-win because your students are getting to play the drums and you're gonna get to teach a form lesson and it's to pop music.

Now, if you're looking for some of those, I have several of them, at least several of them on my website, stories that sing.net/shop number five. It's always fun to have your students take a walk around the classroom and discover some found instruments. So maybe they use a pencil and a chair, maybe they find, I don't know, like a plastic box.

And they use that as the drum and they use their hands to play it. Maybe they use the floor, maybe they use their feet, whatever they like to to use. And then I love to do with the found instruments, really with any instruments. But I love to do this with found instruments, a call and response. So if you have a call and response song,

you can use that. Or you can just make something up like chocolate ice cream on a brownie and your students respond, Ooh, that's good. The next one might be like strawberry cake with strawberry icing. Ooh, that's good. So every time you pick up a new dessert, and then you can have your kids fill in their own. So let's go back and do a quick review.

We talked about asking yourself the questions. What kind of drums do you have? What if you don't have drums? What kind of drumsticks should you use? What if you don't have enough drums? So those are preparation type questions. Then you're gonna go through and you're gonna make sure that you have your room set up. You're gonna decide how you're gonna get your kids in.

You're gonna decide what kind of transitions you're going to use if you need transitions. And you're gonna decide what details you wanna cover in the first drumming lesson. And finally, we've got our five activities, storybook lessons, using your drumsticks in your chairs. My favorite activity, the drum circle, pulling out a pop song and creating a drum piece with it.

And number five, taking a walk around the classroom, discovering some found instruments. Or you might wanna take a walk outside and then do a call and response. Well, that's all I have for you today, but before I go, let me remind you, keep learning, keep growing, and keep being fabulous. You.