Foam Sweet Foam

Some readers may be familiar with my weird love for craft foam.  I love it.  It's SO much better for classroom stuff than poster board or construction paper.

• it doesn't fade - hardly at all
• you don't have to laminate it
• it's really hard to tear!

The nation was introduced to my using it via Recorder Classroom magazine which actually spun into a product that is now for sale - check out Recorder Dude if you're not familiar with it.  It's made out of (you guessed it) craft foam.

I also despise messy boards - be they chalk boards (yes, I have taught using chalk - you kids get off my lawn!) or dry erase white boards.  In my current classroom I am blessed to have two very long walls covered completely with pre-lined music white boards that are magnetic.  I love these boards.  As anyone who uses a dry erase board daily will tell you - they start to look dirty after writing and erasing a few times.  There are ways around this, but I'll save those for another day when I just can't think about what to blog about.

I decided to take the things I do most often (phrases like "Today I will be able to" and "Please turn to page", writing notes, etc.) and turn them into something that I could stick up (with magnets) and take down - thus removing a lot of the need for writing and erasing.  Through this process (and my odd obsession with craft foam), I created an entire set of "music doo-dads" that I have used almost daily for about seven years.

I discovered a heavy-duty hole puncher at a local craft store that will punch out circles about 1½ inches in diameter - the perfect size for a note head to fit in the pre-lined staves on my boards.

I cut several circles in a variety of colors to match the colors of Boomwhackers® as well as the standard black.  I cut several stems, rests, etc. and attached peel-n-stick magnets to the backs.  Since the stems always need to be "attached" to a circle, I cut a rounded "snip" on one end so they could easily be placed on the note heads.

 This saves me from having to write and erase so much with the dry erase markers and keeps my board a lot cleaner (and makes my markers last a LOT longer!).






I keep the items handy by placing them in snack-sized zip-loc baggies and then sticking a strip of magnet on the back.  This allows me to have them handy on the side of my board to grab when I need.

Yes, these take some time to create (summer is a good time to get 'er done) but once they're done - they're done.  As I said, I've had these for several years and they're all in really good shape.  The fact that I have different colors allows for uses other than notes - placing colors in sequence to represent form, using "color rhythms" as a pre-reading activity with lower grades (blue, blue, yel-low, blue!) and other things I often think of as I go.

Here are just a couple ways I've used craft foam in my classroom:

Accessorizing "Recorder Dude" for various seasons.

I made this little guy to display outside of my room.  He holds a copy of my schedule and is wearing a working digital "watch" that's just a small digital clock I attached with Velcro® (you know, for those teachers who like to "drop 'em off early and pick 'em up late" -but that never happens - right?)

I was also going to show you a set of certain characters from a very popular children's cartoon that I made with each sea creature (oops, did I give it away?) showing a different Kodály hand sign but alas, THAT would be violating the copyright Nickelodeon holds.  Using them in "face-to-face instruction" in a "public education institution" and "not affecting the profitability" makes it okay for me to use them in my classroom, but posting them on my blog?  I'm not taking the chance.  They are very cool however and I am most proud of each of them.  This year I finally decided to give them all a chance to rest and the first thing the kids said in August was "Where's ____?"

If you have used craft foam in a creative way in your classroom, I'd love to hear about it!  Leave me a comment.

Until next week...