About Me

I am a Jesus follower who strives to live my life to His glory. I teach kinder-5th grade music in an urban elementary school located in the Houston area. I like to blog because I have lots of extra words, so writing is a great outlet.

This blog gives me the chance to share about what I do all day in my music class. I hope that you enjoy my blog and find it helpful.  


This pictures was taken during our annual "Go Texas Day" square dance and Texas Sing Along.  I decided to dress up as "The Yellow Rose of Texas" because I have a guitar strap with yellow flowers on it and suddenly (the night before our event) I decided that it would be important to match.... Needless to say I made an emergency trip to Sam Moon.... I felt a little silly , but my bright yellow hat made the day so much fun! 

When I'm not writing for this all consuming music teacher blog, you can find my thoughts about life and just about everything else at my personal blog Caveats of a Cluttered Mind

7 comments:

  1. Quick question, have you heard of Freddie the Frog and what do you think of it as a method for teaching pitch?

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  2. I'm not an expert on those resources but I do have one title of the collection. I'm not even sure if it is the first one, but it is the one that puts notes on the staff. From what I can tell the series and the resources that accompany them are rather extensive. When I shared the book with my first graders last year, I was really impressed with how well they stayed focused on the story. They enjoyed it much more than I expected, and without much fuss my students were able to name the pitches that were introduced. Because it was not my intention to use it as a system for learning pitches, that is about as far as it went. That being the case, the rest of what I'm going to type may not be useful to you at all, so reader beware :) :) :)
    I must admit that although I believe the resources to be good, they seem to label the pitches too early for my comfort. With the age students that the title I own seemed to target, I'd rather have a book about Twinkle Twinkle Little Star where the lyrics are laid out to loosely follow the direction of the melody contained in the song. My students already know Twinkle Twinkle and a book which uncovered pitches as they related to known song would be meaningful indeed! Coming from an "Education Through Music" perspective I try hard to ensure that my students have vast amounts of song experience play especially in kinder-3rd before I ask them to label anything formally. I want them to have music in them before I start helping them dissect it into it's respective parts. After all, what good is it to know by sight where "C" should be on the staff, if you don't know how it functions in relation to the other notes? If you are interested in playful and meaningful ways to get your students into the "meat" of being musically literate you should consider attending Education Through Music. We'd love to have you! (I have a link on my ETM page if you are interested in more information). Based on all that I've shared with you I'd say that I plan on mixing "Freddie" into my "melodysoup" as one ingredient and keep great song literature as the main "entree" . Thanks for asking and I hope that my response was helpful. :)

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  3. Hi Bonnie,
    Thank you for this detailed response to Brooke's question. Reading it I found something I am interested in. You have mentioned ETM trainings. Could you let me know the event/training's schedule, please? I am in South Korea and would love to have real Music trainings while I will travel to TX this December.
    I love following your blog, thank you for sharing your expertise and your love of teaching with us.
    Abundant Blessings in your new school year!

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    1. Here is the website where you can find the most current course offerings. There are "Winter" meaning September - At the moment the only course in Texas is in Houston. I do believe that the dates have been set and you can contact one of the course coordinators for more details. Thank you for your kind words!

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  4. Hello Bonnie! I run a non-profit called Recorders without Borders and I was wondering if I could please use the photo of the students holding their recorders on the website I'm developing. Currently I'm posting everything on Facebook at www. facebook.com/recorderswithoutborders. We collect used recorders and share them with children in developing countries. I wanted to let you know that the Texas Music Office has grants to provide instruments to schools that can't afford them, so if your students need recorders you might contact them. Also I"m curious about the add on your blog for Thomson Safaris as Recorders without Borders was founded when my family visited one of the schools sponsored by this company in Tanzania. My contact email is lynn@recorderswithoutborders.org. Thanks so much! Sincerely, Lynn

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  5. You are welcome to use the picture. As far as what shows up in the ad section, google ads chooses the ads for the viewer based on your searches. Thank you for asking.

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  6. Hello Bonnie, perhaps you'll be interested of the idea of music visualization, Melody Composer Squared https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/melody-composer-squared/id988457961?mt=8

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