March Reads for the Music Classroom

March Reads for the Music Classroom 

With spring around the corner I see this as a season of awakening and re-birth. Whether it be nicer weather or more daylight, spring brings energy back into the classroom. The books I am going to recommend for this month, reflect this renewal and springing back into life after a seemingly long hibernation in colder weather. 

Crack-Crack, Who’s That? by Tristan Mory
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This is a brand new book that will be coming out on March 1, 2022, and I am absolutely in love with it! It is about animals hatching in the spring, and comes with a handle that you can pull and the book makes a satisfying cracking sound while revealing the next animal that just hatched. What I love about this book is the element of surprise as my littlest learners will wonder who is hatching at any given moment.

The next part that I love is the potential for instrument playing for every single sound that is listed. You can start with playing sounds for “crack-crack” if you have preschool learners, for example. If you are reading this to older students, have them play all of the other sounds while you play the “crack-crack” sound. Take turns switching instruments to make sure everyone gets a turn. 

This can also be great for center work. I would type out the individual words, print them out, laminate and give them to groups of five students and have them create compositions with the different sounds. I wrote a lesson plan on this for Musicconstructed.com, here is the link.
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Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan 

This is a wonderful book about the ballet Appalachian Spring written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. I love to read the book to my students first, and explain who Martha Graham and Aaron Copland were. Then, I explain what they were trying to represent in this ballet which is the simplicity of the early settler lifestyle which allowed for gratitude and celebrations of every occasion in their lives. I show my students the ballet version and ask them questions regarding the dancing, scenery and characters in the ballet. For a more detailed lesson plan, please click here for a lesson plan that I wrote for Musicconstructed.com on this book.

To continue exploring ballet, check out the Kennedy Center Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Performance. You have to register in order to receive access, and this usually takes one day. This is a wonderful opportunity to continue exploring modern dance with your students, particularly from a legendary American company such as Alvin Ailey. 
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Little Blue Truck-Springtime by Alice Schertle 

Another great read from Alice Schertle! I enjoy her book series a lot and try to use these books for most holidays and seasons with my students. The rhyming text, colorful pictures and hardcover design make this an appealing read for my lessons. This book is no different since it covers one of the important aspects of spring which is rebirth and renewal. Little Blue travels throughout the farm, meeting all of the animals, only to find out that they have given birth to little babies! This is a great way to welcome spring in your classroom. 
If you want some songs to go along with the Little Blue Truck series, I have written song tales for several of the books in this series, feel free to check them out here.

Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson 

I really like using this book in the spring because it is all about food and an abundance of it! Bear will not stop eating and keeps asking his friends to bring more and more food. The rhyming text is once again, another attraction of this book. As an added extension, I have created a chant that your students can say after every time that the book says “But the bear wants more!” Here is a sample of the chant:

This is a great way to add a steady beat, and decoding activity to this book. Another plus is that you can learn about rests by figuring out what the exclamation point means. If you would like more on this lesson, please click here.

I hope these book suggestions help you ring in spring in your classroom. Would love to see how you implement these in your room!
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Springing forward,
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Polina