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Calling all
Educators to share
ideas, ideas, ideas!

Welcome educators!
As the Slugs travel around the country doing educator workshops or performing, we are constantly discovering creative and unique ways that teachers have applied our music in their lessons. We feel inspired to pass these good ideas on to you, and to continually expand the possibilities.

We have created this new section of our website to share ideas about how Slug music can be used for teaching. We'll offer some of our own lessons, and we invite you to do the same!

If you have woven a curriculum around a song or even if you have discovered a good way to teach a song, click on the link above to post it here!

Please share your ideas, thoughts and questions. We want to hear from you. Scroll down to see this month's offerings.
Thanks
Solar Steve

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Here's the WATER CYCLE BOOGIE Lesson Plan and Garden Tour (176KB) and

Wonders of the Water Cycle - from the Idaho Botanical Garden (4.86MB)

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Carla's Lesson Plans (from Nov/Dec 2009 E-news):

I just added “Black Patches” [on PENGUIN PARADE CD] to our class music selection. We're learning about nocturnal animals, so it fit right in! I find the photos for my posters on Google Images, where I found an amazing shot of a group of raccoons at night moving around a circular path ("dancing feet whirl around in celebration"). The song is a hit!

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Click here to view and print out the AEOE Workshop Handout (which is about 23 printed pages long)

Download excerpts from our workshops! We have converted pages from two of our workshops to pdf format you may download here.

Dirt Made My Lunch (1.2MB)
Sun, Soil, Water, and Air (1.4MB)

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NEW!! FREE Water Education Brochure
The folks at Stockton Area Water Suppliers (SAWS) have made their Water Education Programs brochure available to all. While an overview, the brochure does offer grade-specific standards-based learning examples on the topic of our precious H20. Click the link for a downloadable PDF:

http://www.sewd.net/docs/SAWS-Ed-Brochure1.pdf

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FREE download to get you started on a lesson about beavers. Banana Slugs' fan Bari Bucholz of the Teton Science Schools in Jackson, Wyoming, came up with two illustrated lyrics pages -- one simple and one broken into a series of concepts -- to accompany the song "I'm Proud to Be a Beaver" from the Slugs' "Goin' Wild" CD. Thanks, Bari, for sharing your work!

I'm Proud to be a Beaver!
Song Lesson (404kb)          Lyric Sheet (28kb)

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Does Music Help Kids Learn?…
Of Course! And Now It’s Official
We in Banana Slug-land recently came across a study that demonstrates what we’ve been experiencing for over 20 years – music helps children learn other subjects (in addition to Music).

"...this study demonstrates that the addition of a non-instrumental program of music, movement, and play results in positive, quantitative, and statistically significant improvements in the reading scores of second-grade students." [our underlined emphasis]

Here was the set-up:

"... one group received music instruction consisting of music, movement, and play designed to enhance reading skills. The second group received corresponding time in which they were given supplemental practice or instruction in reading."

Here's the link to the full study, if you like...

http://www.joyfulnote.org/MMP-Study.html

9/26/09
Hey Slugs,
I am a relatively new fan, but I love the way my students respond to your music!!! My students have autism, so I create a poster with photos to illustrate the concepts and vocabulary in each song that I use. It is so exciting to see how engaged the students are when I play your songs and, even more fun, to watch them point to the pictures AND sing along when they choose your songs as their preferred activity after they complete their work. Even students who have yet to develop much verbal communication can be heard singing "evaporation, condensation, precipitation..." It brings tears to my eyes!
I'm going to list you as my favorite band on my (new) Facebook page!
Thanks so much for your music!
Carla
Teacher

P.S. Suggestions for lesson plans
When I go into other classrooms with my students and we share your songs (and those of other children's artists, I confess!) with their classmates, all of the students enjoy the pictures, and students who are English learners benefit in particular. My students also like books that illustrate songs, such as Raffi's, so I was delighted to find your River Song book and CD.
I just added “Black Patches” [on PENGUIN PARADE CD] to our class music selection. We're learning about nocturnal animals, so it fit right in! I find the photos for my posters on Google Images, where I found an amazing shot of a group of raccoons at night moving around a circular path ("dancing feet whirl around in celebration"). The song is a hit!

11/09
Hi Guys,

I am a teacher in Somerset, (South-West UK). I have been playing “River Song” to my classes of children aged between 5 and 11 years, for the past two years.

Everyone absolutely LOVES both the book and the music; I had a five year old pop her head round the class door the other day, to tell me that she sings herself to sleep with the chorus every night; she last heard 'River Song' over three months ago !!!

For me and the classes I teach, it’s the unique combination of the water cycle story, wonderful lyrics and incredibly beautiful pictures that makes the creation so special.

Marian Logie :)

PS Have just watched an amazing sunrise here, along with the delights of the 'starling dance'. In winter, Somerset is famous for huge flocks of starlings who migrate here from colder climes and delight us all with amazing flight patterns at night when they roost and in the morning when they disperse to feed!

The Banana Slug performances are audience-participation theater, not a static musical performance. The band members have experience as Science teachers, and they are super-dynamic and engaging. Their shows are perfect for any of the pre-K, 1-3, 4-6 grade age groups. Their energy and ability to engage kids is fantastic. And they have a deep catalog of songs to choose from which all address improving our environment and our connection with it. They have some great songs about composting and the whole cycle of food production from dirt to plant to sandwich, and back around through compost.
Carol Espinoza
Parent
San Mateo, CA

Great job, slugs! This is Mar. A friend … of your music for over 20 years. Just to thank you ... I still use your music when I teach teachers and pass on the info so they will use your music. This week, we sang your “Lizards” song [from Adventures With Air CD] with my VPK class here in Florida. They loved it!

As a gift to our students (past and present), the 4 primary classroom teachers at Larrabee Elementary School would like to create a CD containing a dozen favorite songs that we sing with our kids. The first and second grade students will be singing the songs while one of the teachers plays the guitar. When we asked the children in our classrooms what songs we should include, the “Banana Slug” song [from Dirt Made My Lunch CD] was one that they really wanted!

Hi, I use the Guided Language Aquisition Design model in my classrooom. I write poetry as background informatioon for all my science and socoal science unts. It is a lot of hard work, but once it is done, it is there forever. My students just finished a unit on wetlands. They know more about wetlands now that I do. We are now leaarning the names of the duccks because we are going to Grey Lodge soon. We are singing Butt's Up and trying to understand what it is like to be a duck out in the wild.

I am looking for some ways to make my first grade science curriculum more fun. My students love "Dirt Made My Lunch." We always have quite a lively discussion about how dirt does make our lunch.

I love the Garden Songs CD! (Miss the Nature Man Rap that was on the tape, though.) In my second grade classroom, at a test-score driven inner-city school, I justify the time I spend introducing the songs and we spend singing them, by calling it language arts and word study. I use the printed lyrics of the songs to teach parts of speech. For one song we might highlight all the nouns, for another, the adjectives. This makes learning fun for all of us and gets music and science into our curriculum. Hooray!

MYSTERIES OF LIFE
Purpose: To introduce sun, soil, water and air as being the building blocks for all living things, everything we eat and everything we wear.
Materials: Three black film containers with lids. One contains soil and one should contain water.
Action:
1. "I have in these three jars the four mysteries of life. Without these four mysteries there wouldn't be any food, I wouldn't have this shirt, there wouldn't be anything alive, we wouldn't even be here. Everything on earth depends on these four mysteries."
2. "Who would like to look in mystery jar #1?" Toss the jar to them and instruct them to shake the jar and to think about what is in it and then pour out the contents into their hand so that everyone can see. It's dirt or another name for it is soil.
3. "Who would like to look in jar #2?" Repeat the same procedure only this time instruct the student to fling the contents of the jar into the air. Water!
4. "Who would like to look in jar #3? Remember that this jar has two mysteries in it and when you open it you may have to think a little bit about what is in it. Yes! Air is one of the mysteries now quick put the top back on. The last mystery isn't there. Take the top off. It just rushed in. Yes! it's light. Where does our light come from? The sun."
5. Teach the sun, soil, water and air chant. The chant is a call and response with each line. (this is recorded on the "Dirt Made My Lunch" CD)
Sun, soil, water and air (group repeats after each line)
Sun, soil, water and air
Everything we eat
And everything we wear
Everything comes from
Everything comes from...

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