I had a lot of instruments with me - a guitar, a ukulele, a glockenspiel, a flat drum, a pair of bongos, four triangles, two pairs of claves, and a multitude of egg shakers and maracas. Needless to say, I was ready to show them a whole lot instruments. However, the class evolved into more of a regular class. Here's what happened.
| Hello (Ella Jenkins) | Immerse students as they made their way to the carpet |
| When I arrived, the students were just coming out of their post-lunch nap, and so there were a lot of bleary-eyed children. By the time I had all of my equipment, a majority of the kids had put away their sheets, and so it was time for me to start singing. This song is the Hello song from one of Ella Jenkins' albums ("Hello, hello, hello and how are you?…"), and I simply started singing it to the students. After three iterations, they started to smile a bit more, and so I asked them whether or not they could sing with me. Some nodded, and so we sang it together one more time. I think I was able to get about half of the students to sing part of the song. | |
| Hello In Many Languages | Have students copy me |
| I tried to mimic what Ella Jenkins did on her CD again, and so we covered various greetings in English, followed by Mandarin (which everyone of course knew), Spanish, French, Japanese, German, and then Hawaiian. The students seemed to have a lot of fun repeating words that were certainly different from what they normally heard during the day. I then used "aloha" as a way to move to the next activity… | |
| Aloha Kakahiaka | Teach phrases, and have kids follow a simple hula |
| After teaching the students "aloha", I then taught them the three aloha phrases (aloha kakahiaka, aloha auinala, aloha ahiahi) and explained what they meant. I then told them to mimic what I did, and so I started singing the song while doing very simple movements. For aloha auinala, I asked the kids where the sun was in the afternoon - "the sky" they (mostly) said. So, I during that part of the song, I had them briefly curl their arms above their heads to make a circular sun. When we got to "aloha ahiahi", I asked what they did at night - "sleep" they all answered, and so I had them put their palms together and make a pillow under their heads. The kids seemed to follow the motions pretty well in general, and even though they didn't know the words (I only went through the song once), many of them picked up pieces of the melodic and lyrical pattern to contribute vocally just a little bit. | |
| Intro to Guitar | Show guitar, and let the children strum |
| I had plenty of instruments to get through today, and so it was time finally to bring out the guitar. The students actually had seen a guitar plenty of times during the week, and so many of them shouted out the instruments name when I brought it out. We talked a little about the strings on the guitar, and I played a few chords. At this time, I had all of the students raise their hand if they wanted to try a little strum - just about everyone did, so I walked around the circle (more like a square), and I allowed each child to strum lightly the strings with one finger. Unlike in other classes when I tried this, the pre-K's never overstrummed, and many only played one or two strings. I asked the students if their finger felt funny - no one said so. And so, I told them to watch closely the biggest string as I plucked it hard. I wanted them to see the vibrating string, and most noticed it. I told them that in order to have sound, you had to have movement. Many didn't quite get that, and so I had a few students place their palm on the back of the guitar while I plucked the same string. At that point, those students acknowledged that they did indeed feel something there!
I then had the students watch me as I plucked the top E string as I moved a finger up the fingerboard. I asked them what was happening to the sound - and they noted that it was changing! However, as they were pre-K's, they couldn't really tell me if it was higher or lower, and so I told them that the sound was going up, up, up! I reversed my direction on the fingerboard, and now I was illustrating to them a sound that was going down, down, down. I spent probably 10 seconds trying to explain how the length of the string was changing the pitch, but it was very apparent that that was way over their heads. And so, I asked them to think about something really big, like, a train. What does a train sound like? Well, if you ask that to pre-K's, they will all say in a high voice, "toot, toot!", which isn't quite what I wanted. I had them mimic me with "chugga chugga" in a low low voice; at that point, I asked them if a train was big or small. (They answered that question correctly.) I then asked them to make the sound of a little bird, and while some were making big deep tweets, I made a tiny one and everyone followed. Was a bird big or small, I asked, and they all said that it was small. At that point, I quickly tried to get them to think that big meant low and small meant high. I don't know if that really stuck... At this point, I told them that even though they didn't change their size, their voice was making low and high sounds! That was a good segue into… | |
| I Can Sing Up High | Talk about sounds, and teach song with movement |
| This is always a Kindergartener favorite, and so I was pretty sure that this would work well with the pre-K's. With the concept of a high sound and a low sound in hand, I had the class follow my motions. I sang the first line, reached up to the ceiling, and the kids followed suit. I did the a similar thing reaching down to my toes for the second line. The kids, now standing, were really having a ton of fun with this, and I continued with the exercise until we finished it. We did this again for a second time, and for the third time, I asked the students to try to follow as best as I could, and I did the song slowly, but without stops after each line. We did this two more times, both just a hair faster than the last.
For something like this, I didn't want to try to make the activity so fast that they couldn't follow. That just wouldn't have been fair to the 4- and 5- year olds. | |
| Who's That (Laurie Berkner) | Sing song with guitar |
| With the students seated again, I grabbed the guitar again, and I asked the students to echo "Who's that?" whenever I sang the same phrase. We practiced this twice, and then I started singing the song. Who's That is a great pre-K and K song; it gets the students echoing at different parts of the song, and so they still have to pay attention to when I say those two fun words. I also took advantage of the fact that the students can't really read much; I had the words printed right in front of me, and the kids didn't care. | |
| Intro to Glockenspiel | Demo instrument |
| I borrowed a small glockenspiel from the regular stash from the school, and when I showed it to the students, many chimed in saying that they either had something like it at home, or that it looked like a piano. (Funny how that's the same reaction that I get from 3rd and 4th graders!) I realized at this point that it would take a lot of precious time to have each of the students try to play (and it would be probably really cacophonous), and so I ended up playing a C scale. At that point, the kids started to sing Do-Re-Mi, and I realized that there was a scale already written behind me on the wall, with Do-Re-Mi (and the rest of the scale) labelling the notes! Clearly they've been practicing for my arrival. :)
At this point, I used the glockenspiel to sing… | |
| I am a Pizza (Charlotte Diamond) | Immerse |
| There were a few kids who knew this song, and so we had a good time singing this. Even though I asked the students to echo me, I had to still gesture whenever I wanted an echo, which actually works out since the end of each stanza doesn't really echo. The kids predictably had fun with this song. | |
| Twinkle Twinkle and other variants | Illustrate different lyrics for the same tune |
| I asked the students to mimic my hands as I started doing flashes with them while keeping a beat. Very quickly, students started to sing Twinkle Twinkle; I had forgotten that regularly-paced hand flashes were the international symbol for that song. When they finished, I gave them a puzzled look, and I informed them that I had learned the song but with very different words. I asked them if they wanted to hear it (and of course they said yes), and so I kept doing the flashes, but I sang A-B-C instead. Many children sang along with me, of course. When I finished, I gave them a pensive look, and then told them that actually I knew other words; I started singing Baa Baa Black Sheep, and again students laughed and sung with me. That made 3 songs to the same tune, and there were a couple of students who realized what was happening. I then told the class that Iiked their version the best, and so we finished this exercise by singing Twinkle Twinkle one last time. | |
| Colors (Kira Willey) | Have students move on cue to parts of the song |
| Colors was a song that I had never used in a class, but it seemed like a great song for pre-K (and perhaps Kinders). The song features 9 colors (and a rainbow), and so for each color, I asked the class who was wearing that particular color. I then asked them what has all of the colors that you could think of, and plenty of the children shouted "rainbow!". At this time, I told them that I was going to sing a song about colors, and when I sang a color that they were wearing, they could move their hands in the air. Furthermore, everyone had a color that was a part of a rainbow, and so when I sang "rainbow", everyone could move around.
I had pre-printed illustrations about each color that fit the lyric (e.g. green cricket, grey fog), and I had ordered the slides so that I could sing them in the order of the song. I had to have 6 different illustrations of rainbows, and to make it a little fun, I threw in a rainbow cake as well as a cartoonish rainbow into the stack of sheets. Needless to say, the kids had a great time with this, especially when one of the printed sheets was upside down. | |
| Razzama Tazzama | Dive right into the activity |
| Razama Tazzama is one activity that is great for the smaller kids. I had the students watch what I was doing; I asked them to follow me, and so I jumped right into the song. No one sang with me during the first chorus, but there were plenty of singing voices by the time we got to the second chorus. Similar to what I noticed earlier, unlike the older kids, these pre-K'ers don't go nuts with the motions, even at the "wally-woo-hoo". That made this a ton of fun without any kids flopping into each other. Yay. | |
| Goodbye in many languages | Have children echo me |
| It was nearly time to go, and so I told them that I wanted to say goodbye, but in the same manner that I used to say hello. So, the students echoed me as I said goodbye in French, Spanish, Japanese, and then Mandarin. | |
| Blow a Kiss (Laurie Berkner) | Have children blow kisses to the song |
| This was my goodbye song that I used last year, and it's a real fun one for pre-K and Kinders. I first asked the students how to blow a kiss, and they tried that a few times. I then told them to do that same motion when I sang "blow a kiss". The song provides plenty of opportunities, but after a while, the students simply kept blowing kisses without waiting for a prompt. I started playing this song on guitar, but during a chorus near the end of the song, I put my guitar down and I tried to rally the students again to blow kisses when the lyrics called for it. Anyhow, this was (and is) a great song to end the day. | |
Other activities that I didn't get to was the Balloon Song from Ella Jenkins, If You Got 1 from Justin Roberts, I Am A Bubble form Charlotte Diamond, I'm A Gonna Drive My Car by Laurie Berkner, the Two Hands poem, 5 Days Old also from Laurie Berkner, and Victor Vito (Laurie Berkner once more). In retrospect, all of that alone is enough for yet another class, and so I told the teachers that perhaps one day later in the school year, I could come back and teach some more.
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