08/25/2026
Some moments are worth throwing out the whole lesson plan…even in the second week of Kindergarten music! 📝🗑️🎶
This sweet boy walked into music with his kindergarten class today and promptly raised his hand to ask me if I had a marimba in my music room! Now, we talk a lot about other smaller barred instruments in our music room, but the word “marimba” doesn’t usually come up too often, especially in the first two weeks of kindergarten! 😂 When I asked him where he learned that word, he mentioned they had just read a book in their classroom that had a marimba in it. The rest of his class started blurting out…”Keisha Ann Can!” I had never heard of this book before, so after I explained that I have smaller instruments in our room that are similar to marimbas and while the students were singing our welcome song, I quickly looked up this book to find the page with the marimba! Well, as soon as I saw the page (swipe to see the picture), I knew what we had to do. I NEVER bring out xylophones this early in Kindergarten, but if Keisha Ann can plan one, so could they!!
I was so impressed that this student made the connection to our music room, and I HAD to make sure it came full circle! So I circled up my kindergarten students and placed one xylophone in the middle of the circle. Then, I had pairs of students come to the middle and handed each student one mallet. They had about 15 seconds to play and explore (we talked briefly before about gentle playing), then they went back to their seats and handed the mallet to the next student. It was so simple and OH SO special! I even made sure we all thanked that sweet friend for his brilliant question that inspired our lesson! I just love these little moments that have the biggest impact! ❤️🎶
