It's always great privilege when teachers invite me into their classrooms to sing my songs with their kids. Music and movement have a really positive impact on children's learning. Thank you to Kacie Barratt and her 1st grade class at George Washington Carver Elementary School in Missouri for having me at your school and in your classroom via SKYPE. I had a great time! The children were wonderful. They had beautiful manners and were so engaged with the music and the story I read to them. Fantastic singing and dancing and moving! It was such a pleasure SKYPEing with them.
The highlight for me was playing "We Love Monsters" (a description song about monsters).
I wrote the song back in 2014 when I was teaching Kindergarten. I used the song as a writing stimulus for the children in my class to help them write descriptions about monsters. The song contains many adjectives that describe what monsters look like and verbs that describe the things monsters do. It just amazes me that almost 4 years later I was able to sing the song via SKYPE to a class of 1st Graders half a world away. It was incredible to hear the children enthusiastically singing the song and to see them doing the actions along with me! I never would have imaged I would be doing this when I uploaded my first YouTube video 5 years ago!
Here is the original animation I made for We Love Monsters
Some of the other songs we sang were What makes a good friend?, Dance to the days of the week, The Friends of 10, Bop bop and count to 20 and Get up and dance to The Alphabet. You can check those songs and all of my other educational tunes on my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man!
We also had a fun Q and A. I was very impressed with the children's questions.
Thanks for an amazing experience @RockingDanTM - the kids ❤️❤️❤️ it! I’m so proud of this girl! She’s totally came out of her shell, spoke clearly, confidently, & came up with her own awesome question! #skypetoaustralia @GWCarverES @NeoshoSD pic.twitter.com/yz6NzmFso8— Kacie Barratt (@kmbarratt) January 5, 2018
If you are a K-2 teacher in the USA or somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere and you would like to have a SKYPE sing along with me then send me an email Rockingdantm@gmail.com or message me on Twitter @RockingDanTM and let's see if we can work out a time and date. I've had some Aussie teachers ask me but I'm a full time teacher so I'm always in class at the same time (possibly could SKYPE with other Australian States when the school holidays are different from NSW).
Thanks again to George Washington Carver Elementary School 1st Grade Missouri. We Love Monsters! Go Wildcats!
Until Next Time Keep Rocking!
Rocking Dan Teaching Man.