How to Make Cheap Gifts for Your Students

As a teacher since 1996 I think it's always nice when the teacher gives the students a token of their appreciation. I make these CD's for a holiday and end-of-the-year gift for my students. Most students will treasure these gifts no matter what they are. I make my students a CD of the music that I play in class. I add the students voices to each track before the music starts. They introduce the song and maybe explain when or why it's played in class.

If you are working on a PC, there is a program named "Audacity" that is very similar to Garageband.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Garageband for the mac
• a mac computer with a cd burner

1. 

   Open Garageband to a "new podcast" episode.

2. 

   Import the song you want to include.

3. 

   Record a child's voice introducing the song. Place this track (purple) at the beginning of the track and have the song start playing a little later. You can adjust the volume of the song so that it fades in slowly.

4. Click on "send podast to iTunes" under the "share" menu. This will place the podcast into iTunes where you can then burn it to a CD.

5. 

   Open iTunes and burn a cd with all the podcasts (songs with introductions) that you have created.

Tips & Warnings

• make 2 cd's for divorced families

[theatrikids]

on 2/3/2009 My students must be spoiled. They always ask why there isn't a beat :-)

[Ceile]

on 12/13/2007 Great article! I made music cd's for my kids last year and they loved them!

[grouch]

on 12/6/2007 This is a wonderful idea. My child's teacher did this for them when they graduated 3rd grade and if you popped the cd into a dvd player it was full footage from the graduation set to the music. Great memories.

[arwen1964]

on 12/5/2007 Very nice idea...especially having the students talk about the songs...

[Veesites]

on 12/4/2007 Excellent idea.