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A Ukrainian Christmas Carol
Susan and Erin sharing the headphonesA few weeks ago my cousin, Erin, asked if I would be willing to work with her to create a special Christmas gift for our Baba (that's our 97 year-old Ukrainian...
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Happy Birthday Musicalia!
Today Musicalia is officially 19 years old!Happy 19th Birthday, Musicalia!I wrote my first Happy Birthday post last year and then continued with about 120 posts since then. There are really 2 major...
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The Winter Woods have come down!
A quick photo just before our "Christmas in Narnia" party this past December. I painted this mural of the winter woods near Cair Paravel (from "The Lion , the Witch and the Wardrobe" story...in case...
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Have You Ever Found Yourself in Snowy Land?
Our new greatest hit! This song helps us: use our bodies creativelyuse percussion...any ones we wantplay a 8-beat phrase and stop togetherplay in ensemble and have funmake choices about what and where...
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My Movement Display Board
Musicalia's Movement BoardAt Musicalia...we move!There is a dedicated movement board with charts, words, pictures and it changes weekly.Last week's board looked like thisI have posted charts and a...
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9 Reasons to use Body Percussion
Why body percussion?If you've ever been to an Orff workshop you'll know how integral body percussion is to the learning process. I was taught (over and over) that you don't need the actual Orff...
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Susan and Moka planning next week's classes
Have you seen the recent cover of the The New Yorker? My husband thought the pianist and I had remarkably similar hair. If you click on the picture to make it larger you might be able to read the...
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Practise Pillow
click on image to enlargeWe all need a little motivation sometimes. This is something I recently made for a young fiddle student. It's a practise pillow.How to make the practise pillow1. Find a...
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Farewell February!
It's been a busy, busy February so not much blogging seemed to get done the past few weeks. 1 It was birthday season in our family (including mine) so there were many celebrations and I even closed my...
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Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with Music and Movement Games, Songs, Dramatic Play
St.Paddy's Day is almost upon us! Usually I include lilting tunes in my lessons at this time of year but I'm home sick in bed this week. There'll be no singin''n leppin' Irish-style this week for me....
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Happy Earth Day!
Just a quick note to wish you all a Happy Earth Day! In Canada, Earth Day has become Earth Week for some organizations. It sure didn't start out that way. Earth Day began in the days before cell phones...
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How to Get Updates from Make Me Musical
MakeMeMusical is getting a make-over! Check out the new tagline coming..."nurture, heal and educate thru music, movement and creativity".Dear Wonderful Readers!I have been away from MakeMeMusical for...
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Making a difference in a child's life thru music and movement
It's true!You really can believe you are making a difference in a child's life by......singing to them...singing with them...moving with them...dancing with them...making body shapes with them...using...
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Make Me Musical has moved!
We've moved...are you coming along for the ride???Make Me Musical has a new home!We've moved from blogger (here where you are reading) to wordpress (HERE).Blogger has been such a wonderful home for...
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Good-bye Musicalia...
Good-bye Musicalia...It's trueIt turns out the new lease for my Musicalia space was going to create an unsustainable workload for me. I was unable to sign. These last few months have been a...
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How times change!
How Times ChangeUpdate!Well....I moved this blog from blogger to a wordpress site in 2013.All of that was done in coordination with the publication of my ebook, Growing Grounded: Movement and Songs to...
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A pre-school music teacher asked (true story)
A pre-school music teacher asked, "Susan, do you really think it makes a difference if kids are exposed to music in preschool?""Absolutely," I responded with calm and certainty. "If you weren't there...
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Piano for Children
Piano for Children The starting point in private piano lessons with a child who has maintained and developed their natural musicality before beginning private lessons is quite different than the...
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What if...
What if... What if something really amazing was just about to happen? What if you were stronger than you thought?What if it was safe to open up your heart?What if it was safe to take that risk?What if...
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What is an Orff teacher?
What is an Orff Teacher? Me being passionate about something Orff-yIt always sounds so weird. Orff.Orff is a participatory art. Orff teachers engage people around them and involve them in whole body,...
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Playing handdrums
You need :) a class set of hand drums. I invested in a large bin of small hand drums (20 drums each about 8 inches across) from Empire Music many years ago. Now I have a hand drum for each child and...
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hands-on learning enriches language and motor development
Hands-on Learning Enriches Language and motor developmentTapping rhythms (check out the body percussion posts) is important because when the hands are activated, there is more effective learning.I...
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The Amazing Body Percussion List
The Body Percussion ListWhat to do with this list? I'd play an echo game you clap, they echo your clapyou snap, they echo your snapit's an ear/eye training but it's playful...have fun!one day, I'll...
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The Story of Ferdinand
Once upon a time we performed the Story of Ferdinand as an improvised opera! Author, Munro Leaf wrote this parable for his 5 year old son in 1936 during the civil war in Spain. It's a story about a...
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