Surprise Musical Birthday Class!

One of our students is turning 18 tomorrow. She told me she's going to be alone for her birthday because her parents aren't here and she has no plans. Of course my mom has taught me how to celebrate birthdays!

I quickly decided to make our 5th period vocal music class into a surprise musical birthday party for Jess. One of my other students helped me to prepare during her study hall. We quickly made a banner with crayons and computer paper. We put on the table cloth (I happen to teach in the kitchen anyway!). I was looking for food when I saw all these cakes, goodies and mangos just sitting on the counter from last night's parent open house. Perfect! We even still had punch left over from the open house.

I quickly made party hats (dorky looking) and I put a measure of music on each hat from our sight-singing lesson. Finally the students came in and were all surprised. They actually wore the dork hats the whole time and they loved it! I was so glad to make Jess' day and to teach through celebration. I told the class to "sing the hat" of each person, and that person had to look on the music and tell us which measure was taped to their hat. It was so fun!

Then we sang happy birthday to Jess in English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese and Indonesian. We even video taped ourselves! Then the kicker was when I was wearing my dork cone hat and standing on the table setting up the video camera. Right as I was totally in an unusual place "teaching", the principal walked in with two visitors to the school!! I was like, "It's not normally like this--don't get the wrong idea!" This was all as I was standing on the table behind the TV. Fortunately they had a good sense of humor and stayed for the performance. I know my students will not forget that music lesson for a long time!