Dear music teaching friend,

I’m just a music teacher like you! I’ve been through highs and lows in my career. I’ve taught in every type of school from special needs schools, private and public schools. I’ve taught private instrumental, classroom and made a business teaching preschool classes. In music teaching I’ve been there and done it all!

I graduated from teachers college in 1992. Many of my colleagues received jobs in nice city schools. I went to a rough town in the South Australian outback. I arrived there with nothing. I had no resources except what I’d personally put together. I soon discovered that the staff and the admin of the school weren’t going to help.

The only way I had to get through was to work hard. Really hard! I worked incredibly long days planning. Within two years of this routine I was totally burned out!

I knew there had to be a better way. I knew that what made a difference was not lesson plans or the worksheets. When I had the lesson plans handled, I could focus on the children! I really wanted to make a difference for these children. I could see the potential if I could just spend time focusing on them. My issue was that I was stuck working hard to just create resources.

That’s when I had the vision of the Fun Music Company. Way back then! 30 years ago! I hadn’t even heard of the internet at that time. However, I saw the vision back then of a place full of teaching resources! Something so complete that it would have everything required for teaching. That way, I could focus on the students!

It took me a great many years of teaching in all different situations. I taught preschool, primary and high school. I realised that the creation of a complete resource isn’t as easy as it seems! I did hold that passion in my mind from that very first day teaching!

I’ve made it my mission to understand music curriculum. I want to get this handled for teachers! That way, they can focus on the students and have the life they deserve.

Then the breakthrough moment came. We looked at every music curriculum in the world we could find. We found that there are four broad terms, or categories of activity in music. These represent the essence of every statement in the curriculum.

That became our four UNIT system. It is taking everything in the curriculum and bringing it down to simple steps. Steps that are clear and easy to understand for teachers and students.

Each grade level contains a carefully programmed set of aural lessons. This is your key to teaching the elements of music to your students. This is taught in a hands-on way, requiring little preparation time.

The students learn about elements of music such as rhythm, dynamics, tempo and timbre. They will have fun and learn through exposure.

In this program, students view aural as a game! It’s a fun activity to get students into music in a very simple way.

Teachers who are feeling uneasy about presenting this material can use the pre-recorded tracks. Experienced teachers can extend the activity by using their own clapping and singing patterns.

This program includes a complete composition unit. This is your solution to meeting the composition requirements of your curriculum. Students will have great fun while they create their own music.

Students will create their own material in an age-appropriate way. Students start with simple graphic notation scores and group activities in the younger grades. They then progress through structured improvisation and composition frameworks.

In the older grades students will begin using technology. Students can use whatever devices are available to them to create their own music.

CONNECT is a full listening program. This is your solution to getting students to listen to a variety of musical styles. This means you can expand their awareness and develop knowledgeable musicians.

Students will watch a short YouTube video. Then they participate in a range of response activities.

They will start with a few factual fill-in-the-blanks questions. There are also classroom discussion questions to prompt a deeper level of knowledge.

The Fun Music Company Curriculum has been designed to meet your curriculum requirements and provide a fun, engaging experience for your students at the same time.

This curriculum program has been designed around the requirements of a number of curricula around the world. We originally wrote the content to meet the needs of the National Curriculum of Australia, the National Curriculum of England and Wales, and the Common Core Arts Curriculum of the USA.

Because of this, you can be confident that no matter what country in the world you are teaching in, that the materials will be relevant and be able to be used with your curriculum.

If you have a specific curriculum you are working with please contact us and we will provide you with a matching document showing how our materials meet your requirements.

Includes step-by-step videos for you to play in the classroom. Even if you aren’t experienced in teaching an activity all you need to do is play the video and follow the instructions.

In the SING & PLAY section our Singing introduction video provides the background to the song, teaches the action and any Kodaly inspired pitch and rhythm concepts.

Our singing performance video then provides the sheet music and words in a format that you can press play and go! You never need to worry about forgetting the words again!

Then our Untuned percussion introduction video teaches every percussion part by itself, and students will use body percussion to silently become familiar with the rhythms before trying them on the instruments with the Untuned percussion performance video.

Then students can learn each tuned percussion part with our Tuned percussion introduction videos to each song, where they will see each part being played on the screen, and be introduced to music notation through exposure, and then they can perform them together on the tuned percussion performance and complete ensemble videos.

In the COMPOSE section of the curriculum a step-by-step video precedes each and every activity, which means that you can virtually teach this part of the curriculum with no additional lesson preparation at all – watching the video and then guiding the students through the activity on the following screens.

Every grade includes step-by-step lesson plans, either in PDF form or in our printed guidebooks, which detail every step of the lesson, and provide alternatives for different ability levels in your class.

We have consulted with experts in leading music education pedagogies like Orff and Kodaly and incorporated the best from these systems in the lessons, so whether or not you’re familiar with those methods you can incorporate the best ideas.

Kodaly inspired folk songs

We have researched and utilised some of the most well-known and educationally based folk songs from the repertoire.

In our singing introduction video, we help with some of the more difficult teaching concepts for you, so even if you’re not experienced teaching music you’ll be able to give your students the gift of these amazing music education experiences.

If you are an experienced Kodaly inspired teacher, you can be confident that the song repertoire will support you, and this provides a framework for you to build on with all the educational concepts covered.

Orff arrangements ready to go!

We have consulted with experts in the Orff Schulwerk and developed arrangements with a variety of drone and ostinato parts.

With tuned and untuned percussion we demonstrate each and every part, and students learn through the experience of being involved kinaesthetically with body percussion and action before getting onto the instruments.

These arrangements are a springboard for you to extend and adapt to your classroom and provide lots of opportunities for yourself and your students to unleash your creativity.

We provide an easy to use web-based interface with no software to install. All you need is a projector or video screen attached to a computer with internet access.

All you need to do is login to our members area, click on the grade level you wish to teach, and away you go!

We know that some schools have ukuleles, and some schools don’t! Also some teachers like to do it in Grade 5 or 6, and some prefer using it with earlier grades. For this reason we have kept the core curriculum to percussion, and incorporated our comprehensive ukulele curriculum as a bonus.

If you don’t have much in the way of instruments … why not use some buckets?

Often music teachers are called upon to teach a preschool program, either in the school or around the community. As well as this, we know that sometimes kindergarten classes need more materials to keep them busy and on track. For these reasons we include a complete Pre-K lesson plan curriculum with this program.

Every curriculum document in the world has music composition front and center. This encourages children to not only sing and play other people’s music, but to create their own. We understand that this can be daunting for teachers – no matter how much experience they have teaching music! For this reason we have included a special training program.

We ensure that you get what you need for your teaching.

As a member of our curriculum program, you have our personal support to guarantee that what we have provided for you meets your curriculum needs.

If the program does not meet a curriculum need that you have, we will either supply you with another product from our catalog free of charge, or work with you to revise what we have to fit your curriculum need.