Teaching Notes, 20141210

If you’re wondering why I skipped a week, it was because I had fallen ill right after Thanksgiving with a pretty bad fever. My fever broke the day (really the night) before I was supposed to teach last week, and I didn’t want to risk getting the kids sick, and so I waited a week. However, after the fever my voice pretty much disappeared, and even after a week of recovery, I still didn’t have my full vocal range back. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way.

I knew that I was going to use my iPod today, and so while the students were gathering around the carpet, I played the March of the Toy Soldiers for the students. One quarter to one half of the students always chime in with something that showed that they were familiar with the song - either they knew it was from the Nutcracker, or it involved a ballet, or it involved some sort of show. I’d use this song later, and I wanted those who were less familiar with the song to have heard it for a little bit.

Leaves Are Red and Yellow	Review song and sing about the cold crisp air
Today was a day before a large storm system was to sweep through the whole state, and so the plan was to sing this along with the crisp cold air lyrics. However, upon singing the song I discovered that I couldn’t really sing very high at all; that second line was unsingable at my usual class volume! I had to lightly falsetto this for the 3rd and 4th lines, but it was so poor (in my opinion) that I bailed on trying to sing about that cold air, and I moved on. I did intend on adding another line to the song, but I felt that the red/yellow addition was enough for today. So, I moved on…
Let’s Travel Down the Music Road	Warmup kids with solfege
My voice wasn’t about to suddenly regain its full strength between classes, and so for the second class, I decided to substitute this very short song. I did sing it lower than I would have liked to (and I practice this in the car first), but I still had to falsetto the higher notes. Fortunately, kindergarteners are pretty forgiving (even the 1st class and my horrendous performance) and the kids sang along fine. I added solfege, which the kids also happily followed.
March of the Toy Soldiers	Listen and find the pattern of the song
This is an activity that I’ve done several times during the holidays, where I play the march, followed by the three different sections, albeit one at a time. For each section I had the students describe how they felt when listening to the music. Now, for kinders, they definitely need a little more guidance and the answers aren’t as predictable as they would be for 1st or 2nd graders; I did steer them towards three distinct themes. I then had three students come up, one assigned to each of the themes, and then when I replayed the entire march, I wrote the students’ names (or initial) that corresponded to what the students were hearing. The class ends up with a ABACABA pattern; I don’t actually double the A’s; it makes for an unnecessarily long string. However, this also allowed me to introduce “chorus” (A), stanza (B), and bridge (C). Now, this is a bit of a stretch; the March has no words, and chorus/stanza are really concepts meant for songs with lyrics. However, I did want to emphasize the point that music has patterns, and like songs with choruses, the March seems to always come back to A. I then had the students recall “I Think You’re Wonderful” (Red Grammer) - a song that they have heard nearly every Wednesday at assembly; that song definitely has a chorus and a stanza (but no bridge), but it gave the students an example of patterns in a song.
Snowman Scale	Teach song, and movements
I started this by talking about the storm, how it meant that some parts of California were going to get snow, and that someone out there will be building a snowman soon. I had the students pretend they were a big snowman, and then I asked what they would use to decorate the snowman. The mention of the carrot nose then allowed me to introduce the little rabbit in the song, who was eager to eat that carrot nose. This song started out fine, but then around sol or la, my voice started giving out again, and I had to resort to a very quiet falsetto for the rest of the song. The snowman scale song is something that is meant to introduce the solfege body motions, particularly on the way down at the end of the song. The students did follow me down, but I don’t think that the motions really stuck.
Pony Macaroni	Teach song, zipper in movements
I segued into this song by asking the students who had a pet at home. We talked about a few animals (someone said that they had a baby tiger!), and eventually I mentioned to the class that once I imagined I had a pony… named Macaroni. Of course I received a lot of chuckles at this point, and so I simply broke out into song, with the kids echoing me. This was the first time that the students heard the song, and since I didn’t have a lot of time, I simply had the students trot around as if they were on a pony as I sang; I suddenly stopped at “stop” to see if the students followed. The found this to be a fun little challenge, so I substituted “walk” and “hop” for trotting during the 2nd and 3rd iterations of the song.
John the Rabbit	Review, sing more
With only the few minutes left, I talked more about animala, and I asked them about the rabbit that I used to know as a child. I also asked the students about the song and how it was sung, and even though not everyone remembered, I started singing, and the students responded. A children’s musical group named “Key Wilde and Mr. Clarke” have an amusing rendition of John The Rabbit, which includes stanzas dedicated to Ralph the Raccoon and Mike The Monkey. The kids absolutely loved these alternate versions, and even though it was clear that I was making all of this up (i.e. I probably didn’t have a raccoon burning down my attic when I was a child), it was a great way to end the day.

Even though I didn’t have much of a voice, this day turned out to be pretty good. The March of the Toy Soldiers always takes up a lot of time, but I felt that the kids picked up on forms in music; I’ll try to keep asking the students about the patterns that they hear when we introduce new songs.

Teaching Notes, K, 20141126

Today was the day before Thanksgiving, which meant that it was time to pull out all of the turkey songs! Yipeee!!!!

Leaves Are Red and Yellow	Review song and add one more line
I started singing the song, and after singing the first stanza, I had the students stand up if they were wearing red or yellow when we sang “red” or “yellow”. Today turned out to be crazy hat/hair day, which also meant that students had a little more leeway in what they could wear. We then re-sang the song with the red and yellow movements (basically standing up followed by sitting down), which brought some amusement to the students. I did intend on adding another line to the song, but I felt that the red/yellow addition was enough for today. So, I moved on…
5 Fat Turkeys	Have students follow hand motions, teach song by echo
I didn’t really have to segue anything here - I simply instructed the students (silently) to follow my hands - first I did some simple motions until I had a quorum of students’ attentions, and then I started making the hand-turkey. With the hand-turkey assembled, I simply started singing the song. But, before I started formally teaching the song (which is very short), I stopped to talk about the upcoming holiday and what people liked to eat. Despite the song’s obvious subject, I received a variety of good answers comprised of foods other than turkey. Eventually we talked about the turkey, and I asked the students which was the animal that didn’t really like Thanksgiving as much as we did. I then had them re-form the hand-turkey, and we covered the song in echo + motions. The song gave me another chance to teach them another ASL sign - tree, which we used in the song.
John the Rabbit	Get students to respond to each lines of the song
We talked more about the other kinds of foods, and this time I had them echo me (like we did months ago) in sol-mi for each food that they liked. For instance, a student would say that they liked potatoes, so I would ask in sol-mi “who likes potatoes?” And then, the students would respond in sol-mi “I like potatoes”. I told the students about how my family growing up liked to make soup out of vegetables in the garden, but there was always a pesky rabbit that I named “John” who would sneak in and eat vegetables right out of the garden. I then told the students that my mother would sing the song and I would sing along. Of course this is another entirely contrived story, but it did solve the problem where the response that I wanted the students to mimic was “yes ma’am”. (I am not a ma’am.) I told the students that I, as a small boy, would sing “yes ma’am” when my mother would sing a line, and with ukulele in hand, I started to sing the song. When we got to the end of the song, I told them that the last line would start with “No”, and so when that happened, the answer was a long “nooooooooo, ma’am”. We sang through one time through, and I think the students got this. I definitely want to re-use this next time, so I moved on from there.
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Review, compare rhythm vs beat, and then play the game
I started the students in a steady clap, and then I had the students sing Bee Bee in sol-mi. I then asked the students if I were clapping steadily or if I were clapping to the words. I reviewed the “beat” with the students, and I added the tidbit where the beat can start before the song and keep going after the song was over. I had the students try to compare the beat by clapping to the words; then, I introduced formally (finally!) “rhythm” to the students. Before playing the game, I had them listen to me clap either a rhythm or beat (using old songs like Bongo Joe, Oats Peas Beans, and even Five Fat Sausages), and I had them identify which one I was clapping. I would have to remind them about the guidelines each time (e.g. was I clapping to words), but the students started to get it. We’ll definitely revisit this during the rest of the year. We then proceeded to play the game with the ball again a few times.
5 Fat Turkeys	Reprise!
After we were done, to recover the students’ attention, I had them follow my hands again, and this time, I had them do the 5 Fat Turkey song one more time, this time with a turkey pointing the other way. I didn’t have to re-announce the song; to them it was spontaneous fun.
The Turkey Ran Away	Teach by immersion, zipper in a few other foods
I had the students remind me who didn’t like Thankgiving so much, and so I started singing this song all the way through. I then asked the students what other foods (yep, pretty much the same thing as before), and then I asked them what they could make of those foods. Slowly, we made our way through apple (pie), pumpkin (pie), potato (mash). For the first one I sang the song with the substitution, but then I had the students simply sing along with the other foods. It seemed to work pretty well.

I was pretty much out of time here. For the first class (for which I could have gone overtime, I wanted to have the kids try Keep The Kettle Boiling, but they seemed to be at their attention limit, so I backed out of that. For the second class, I also encountered the same thing, except that I was able to get the students to chant “1,2,3” while clapping before the bell rang. Alas, I’ll use that in a future class.

I ended the say with Make New Friends.

Teaching Notes, K, 20141119

I decided again to try to follow the regular lesson plan again for this week, with a just the tiniest bit of review.

Fine Friends Are Here	Review song and add the bridge
I started singing the song, expecting the students to echo the 2nd half of each line, but instead, they started to sing along with me. About a third remembered the hand signs the first time around, and then by the end of the song most of the class was doing the signs. I then told them that it might rain, and that the next part of the song sang about a thunderstorm - and then, I proceeded to sing the bridge. I had the students then echo the bridge with me; after the bridge was completed, I asked them what part of the song should come next, and they simply fell back to singing the original song.
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Reprise chant with dynamics, and then play the game again
This exercise was pretty simple - once I had the students in a circle, I started chanting, and the students followed. I had them also clap the beat while chanting. Next, I asked them about how we chanted before, and we quickly reviewed what “staccato” meant. I then told them that I wanted to teach them more Italian, so I wrote the word “piano” at one end of the whiteboard. We covered what it meant, and I had the students do the chant in piano; even if they emphasized the last word, it was fine. Of course, I then had to teach them what “forte” meant, which was pretty easy. For the next part, I had the students chant while I pointed to piano or forte. The first time, I simply alternated line by line, changing the dynamics each time. However, the second time, I was a bit more random, and the students had a fun time trying to follow, even if there was a delay before they adjusted to where I was pointing. To cap this off, I had the students play the game with passing the tennis ball around again, but this time, I had the students concentrate on passing the ball when we would ordinarily have clapped. We played 4 rounds of the game this time around before moving on.
Snail, Snail	Teach song, then lead students in a trip around the room
I first hummed the Snail song, and had the students hum with me. Then, I had them guess what kind of animal it was, but to help them out, I asked them if the song was slow or fast, high or low, and soft or loud, characteristics that also matched the animal. There were only so many musical clues that one could give before I had to provide more obvious clues, such as the house, and the spiral. When the students guessed correctly, I then had them sing the words to the song. At this point, I was going to lead the students into a spiral. I first tried this with the first class, but it only led to chaos, and I quickly punted. For the second class, I decided to not go into a spiral immediately, as students wanted to take each step closer to me, rather than follow whomever was in front of them. And so, I had the students join hands, and while singing the song, I led the students away from the carpet, around the classroom, and then eventually back to the carpet where I then led them into the spiral that goes into itself and then leads out. It actually worked pretty well; while the students didn’t quite see we were walking in a spiral, they could tell we were somehow walking amongst ourselves and we seemed to magically make our way out of a knot without dropping hands. I originally was going to do hand signs for the songs but I forgot. Oops.
Identify animals in instruments	Play various classical pieces meant to represent animals
I told the students that they were good at identifying animals from songs, and so I asked them to think of what animal they were hearing when I played Vivaldi’s spring (first movement). It took a bit of time, but eventually I got a few good answers - birds (of various types), insects, and other things that were either small or could fly. This musical piece also has changing dynamics and so I had the students tell me when the volume changed and in which direction (piano or forte). I followed up with playing other pieces, this time from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. This took a little bit of work for the first two pieces (Lion, Chickens), and I so ended with the Cuckoo, which was guessed correctly and also required the students to listen intently.
Goodbye My Friends	Sing in different volume or style
It was time to end already, but I wanted to change the song a bit, and so I had one class sing in piano, which worked fine. I had the other class chant in staccato, which the students also enjoyed.

I was hoping to have the students alternating chants and singing for songs that they previously covered, but I didn’t really have much time to do so. I’ll try to do some of that next week. However, next week is also the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so I’ll have to make sure I cover some of the holiday material that is always so much fun to teach.

Teaching Notes, 20141112

With Halloween now past, and a few weeks before Thanksgiving arrives, I could finally rely mainly on the suggested curricula from MfM. This day, I was going to bring the rhythm sticks back, while reviewing a few things from the past. I also wanted to introduce rhythm,.

Leaves Are Red And Yellow	Review song and add a third stanza
The students were already familiar with this song, and with a change in the weather coming very soon, I wanted to introduce the line where the air was “crisp and colder”. This was turned out to be a pretty easy exercise, now that this was the third time the students had sung this song. I started the first class with “red and yellow” before following up with “crisp and colder”, and it allowed me to talk with the class about how it was getting colder. I had the students wave their hands and make swishing sounds to represent the wind when they sang the new lines. Incidentally, for the second class, I inadvertently started by singing the new line, which meant that I was singing alone for that entire first time, but then I quickly switched to “red and yellow”.
I’m In the Mood for Singing	Start singing and teach by echo
I sang the whole song through once, and then had the students answer (e.g. “hey, how about you?”) each of the odd-numbered lines. I think this took a little getting used to, so I was deliberate about taking this slowly the first time through. I did have the students emphasize the very last word of the last response (“that!”), which added a little bit of excitement to the song. I tried this one more time through, although this time I quickly whispered their response; the last two responses are similar enough that they definitely still needed some help. Originally I was going to try to substitute another thing for “singing”, but I decided to move onto the next item.
Little Bird	Teach song and lead activity
We spent a little bit of time talking about birds that they saw or heard recently, and I certainly got a variety of them, some real, and some imaginary. I had the students mimic the sounds coming from the birds, such as blue jays, crows, and tweety birds. I then told them that I heard chickens, turkeys, and then even a hummingbird (which you can’t really hear). I then proceeded to tell them about a time when a bird flew into the room when I was teaching. This story is of course manufactured; it’s part of the suggested curriculum, but it does give a nice backstory to the song. I sang the first half of the song, then I had the students echo the song in parts to me. It then told the second half of the story, sang the second half of the song, and then had the students echo it back to me. After I mentioned that the bird actually flew out the window, I then had the students stand up and raise their arms as if they were the window shades; when they sang “and buy molasses candy”, I had them lower their arms and squat down as if the shades were closing. The game for this song is pretty simple; one student is the “bird”, and while the song is sung, the bird can fly in and out of the circle of student windows. When the window shades go down, we can see whether or not the bird escaped. The students of course loved this game. The challenge here, however, is that only one or two birds can really be flying in the circle at any time. I first had one student (twice), then I tried having two before moving onto the next activity.
Rhythm on Rhythm sticks	Review ways to play on the sticks, find rhythms
While humming “I’m in the Mood for Singing”, I stared passing out the rhythm sticks, but first with the smooth sticks only. After passing those out, I had the students put their stick on the ground, and when most did that, I started passing out the rippled sticks. I realized later on that I probably should have just passed out the rippled sticks to those who had put their stick on the ground first. I meant to have the students sing to “I’m in the mood for tapping”, but I simply forgot to do this. We spent a little bit of time reviewing ways to play the sticks - tapping, zipping them, clicking them.
Bongo Joe	Stick to song
I got the students quickly to form a continuous beat, and then I started to sing Bongo Joe to the song. Next, I had the students stick to just the last three beats of each phrase - that sort of worked ok, although it was a little difficult to have the whole class stick to just those three beats. Finally, I was hoping to have the students stick the rhythm of the song, but a combination of the fact that the students didn’t really remember the song very well from past weeks, and the fact that, well, they had sticks, made it difficult for them to really stick together (no pun intended - hah!). As such, I then went ahead and collected the sticks while having the students echo “Hello World”.
Name That Tune	Have students guess rhythms
This was a pretty straightforward activity, where I would click a rhythm, and they would guess. However, it wasn’t very effective initially. I tried Bee Bee Bumblebee, Oats Peas Beans, I’m in the Mood, and Old MacDonald, and the only song that the students were able to identify without a melody hint was Bee Bee Bumblebee. They still seemed intent on guessing and were paying attention well, but it’s going to take a bit more work to get the students familiar with the songs before they can pick them out just by a rhythm. We ended with Goodbye My Friends Goodbye, as I have been doing pretty much all year.

I did manage to get the sticks out, but in retrospect, the students didn’t have the sticks for very long. One thing that was notable - I had a substitute for the second class, and those students probably did the best out of any K class I’ve taught ever with a substitute. (Props go out to the sub, too!) For the first time, I didn’t use “show me” or “class” to recapture the focus of the class; instead, I simply did a few arm waves with the first class, and with the second class, I didn’t have to do anything! It was pretty refreshing!

Teaching Notes, 20141029

There are certain things that I always want to cover each year, and one of those things is Halloween. The latest version of the curriculum doesn’t have a lot of Halloween material, and so I have taken the liberty of adding some Halloween activities right around this time of the year. The year-round schedule typically allows me only one day to cover Halloween material, and so I do feel like I’m forcing the material onto the students, but typically they have a good time with it.

Fine Friends Are Here	Review song as well as hand motions
This is turning into a regular opening song. As this is the first class after the break, I wanted to review this again to see how well the students remembered the song; the first class had trouble remembering (or they weren’t in much of a singing mood), while the second class sang with a bit more energy. About half of the students did the hand motions with me, and with the second class, I decided to have them stand, and we did some body-solfege signs instead. I also asked (only) that class if they could tell the difference between the two “Fine friends are here” responses, and they noted the difference. With that, it was easy for them to make the connection with the body-solfege to the pitch of the two responses.
Halloween Surprise	Teach motions, song
Normally I ask the students what they are going to be for Halloween, but this time, I had them talk about things they were going to see during Halloween. It took longer than expected for a student to mention pumpkins (I suppose pumpkins are too commonplace in the fall to be associated strongly with Halloween versus, say, witches and black cats), and so I asked them how to make a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin. That allowed me to then walk the students through the lines of the song, each time doing motions with it. Eventually, I had the students echo me, first in chant, then in song, the steps for a Halloween surprise. I then told the students the importance of being really quiet initially, and then shouting “surprise” to make the biggest surprise effect. The students gladly followed that!
It’s a Very Good Day	Teach song, two variations
It was sunny outside, and so I simply started having the students echo me. When it came to “why?”, I tried to get the students to ask in a very inquisitive fashion, hand/shoulder gestures and all, but only half of the students followed. I then tried changing the song to “running through the wind”, and then asked them what the end of the song should be. I think the students understood it (as they guessed the ending of the song correctly), but I could tell that they weren’t quite sure why they were just sitting around, singing a song. Originally I was going to bring the students outside with this song, but it was a little cold outside, so I decided against it. If it is warmer next week, I’ll do this outside (while I still can).
5 Little Pumpkins	Teach song and motions
5 Little Pumpkins is always fun, but it is just a little complex for Kindergarteners. I kept this entirely as an echo at first, and I made sure the kids mimicked my motions. As usual, I also made it a point to teach them “ready” and “fun” in ASL. We did this twice via echo, and then one time through all together. Normally if I had another week, I’d probably would have waited until the following week to do the song all together, but I probably won’t revisit this in November.
Highway Number One (Shenanigans)	Have kids follow directions
Highway Number One is an old favorite of mine, and isn’t part of the curriculum any longer, but it’s something I think the kids, particularly at this age, always enjoy. I talked with the kids about how Halloween was celebrated in other parts of the world, including this country called “Australia”. I then proceeded to mention that while Australians also speak English, they speak it a bit differently, so one had to pay extra attention to understand what was going on. I then had them practice some of the moves that I knew would appear in the song. This really is basically a song that tries to get the students used to stopping and listening. In between the breaks, there was a lot of chaos, and a lot of noise and I had to speak pretty loudly before each “stopped to see someone” in the song, but amazingly the students actually did quiet down enough to hear what the instructions were. The students, as expected, had a good time, and they wanted to do the activity again. Of course, I moved onto the next item.
Leaves are Red and Yellow	Teach song
I realize that I should have introduced this before the break, and because my back injury forced me to cancel the last class before break, I didn’t have a chance to get the students familiarized with this song. There is a Halloween variant of the song which I wanted to get to, and so I rushed a bit trying to teach the song. I was following Highway Number One, and so I also had the additional challenge of trying to keep a riled up class focused. That didn’t go so well, and while we got through the original stanza of the song (including biting into an apple), I only really had two-thirds of the kids’ attention, and we never really did get to the Halloween verse.

Like last year, we ended with Goodbye My Friends Goodbye.

I was a little surprised that it was so difficult to keep the kids’ attention, even though this was the first week back from break. I do have to remind myself that these are kindergarteners, and so I do have to keep changing the focus and not spend too much time on one activity. Also, I’ll probably schedule a naturally chaotic activity like Highway Number One for the end of the class.

Next week is obviously not Halloween, but maybe I’ll sneak in a review of one of the holiday activities from today for next week, particularly the Leaves are Red and Yellow.

Teaching Notes, 20141105

It was an extremely sunny day today, and the morning was significantly warmer than last week’s class thanks to the end of daylight savings time. And so, I absolutely had to get the students outside. But as promised, I did want to retry one of the Halloween songs from last week, which I did right from the very beginning.

Leaves Are Red And Yellow	Review song and add second stanza
Instead of the usual opening songs that I’ve (over)used, I simply started singing this song as the students gathered onto the carpet. During that time, I also reminded the students to pretend they had a big apple and to take a bite out of it at the end of the 3rd line. After one time through, I told the students to pretend their hands were slowly falling leaves, and we sang it all together, again repeating the dramatically large imaginary apple. I then sang the first line of the 2nd line that I wanted to use - the line with flapping crows and the scarecrow. Before proceeding with the other lines, I had the students flap their arms like crows. Then, when it came to the 3rd line, I asked the students if they knew what a scarecrow looked like, and how they would mimic it. Going from flapping wings to the still scarecrow was pretty easy for them (many stood up to make it even easier), and so we practiced that line. Next, I asked the students if scarecrows are happy or creepy, and when they came to a quick consensus, I had them make the scariest face they could when doing the scarecrow, and to say “beware” in an equally mortifying voice. The students definitely had fun with this! We sang the 2nd stanza one more time together before moving onto the next activity
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Review chant, sing in sol mi
Quickly, I started the chant, which the students of course remembered. I then reviewed the motions, which they more or less remembered as well. I then started singing it in sol mi, and the kids were able to follow me pretty quickly. Sometimes, based on how the students are faring, I’ll introduce something that I really didn’t plan on doing - this time, I followed up the sol mi rendition with the same but now in staccato. The students again followed my lead, and I asked them how that last bit of singing was different. I got a variety of answers, from softer or higher, which might have been true, but wasn’t what I was really looking for. Eventually I did get a student to say something along the lines of “there was space between the words”, or “it started and stopped”. I then introduced the term “staccato”, and how the word’s meaning is evident from how you say the word. We sang the song one more time in staccato. This was something that was completely unplanned, and I didn’t want to throw in “legato”, at least not today.
Tone Bells	Get students playing bells, drones to songs
Our school doesn’t have much in terms of orff instruments, particularly those where you can limit easily what tones are available. I do have a set of tone bells, and so I took out the lower G, C and middle G, C, and used those instead. Upon introducing the tone bell, I talked a bit about how to hold it, and how to play it. I also asked the students what would happen if I held the entire tone bell, including the metal. I got very good answers, and amusingly in both cases, multiple answers were true (including one where a student said that I’d hit myself if I tried playing it with my hand on the metal). I did spend just a little bit of time explaining how sound needs space and the ability to move, and holding the metal prevented this from happening. I didn’t want it to turn into a physics class for kinders, so I then asked a student to come up. Like past years, it was better to have the teachers choose the students to come up, and that seemed to trigger in some of the kids’ minds that being good meant the possibility of going up to play with the bells. With the one student, I tried to get the student used to playing on “1” of “1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4,…”, of course, ignoring the first “1”. Over the years, I did try the countdown (e.g. “3, 2, 1, hit”), but the hit-2-3-4 method seemed more natural for the students, especially once you had to start singing along with the bells. Before having a second student come up, I held up the low G (the lowest of the bells that I had), and I asked the students to compare the two. I then asked them how it would sound compared to the first. Surprisingly most students thought it would sound higher, and when I played it, I got to remind the students about how we once compared the sound of birds to the sound of a passing train - bigger means lower usually. With the second student now available, I informed the class that I was challenging the two to play together - that brought a surprising hush to the group. I then had the students play on the first of the four counts, and then I simply started singing Bee Bee in sol-mi. The singing students sang with me, and the bell players kept up the simple drone pretty well (with my help via gesturing), and that seemed to captivate the students. I proceeded to swap out students, get them playing together, and sing Bee one more time. After swapping the students again, I then sang “Oats Peas Beans”, to which about half of the students followed. During the first class, I tried singing the stanza to Oats, and very few remembered it, so I stuck with just the chorus. After going through Oats once, I then added two more students, giving me four bell players. We sang through Oats again, and then I changed the song to Old MacDonald. I don’t use a lot of songs that are what I consider to be generic childhood songs, but I was pretty sure that Old MacDonald was a familiar tune, and I wanted the students to concentrate on either singing with a drone, or playing a drone. I did discover, however, that Old MacDonald led to the bell players playing when the cows mooed or when the ducks quacked, disrupting the regularity of the drone. Whoops. I wasn’t able to get to all of the students, and there was some grumblings, but I think also with the teachers choosing the well behaved students, most students got the message that being good meant playing instruments.
It’s A Very Good Day	Review, and bring kids outside
After the tone bell exercise - which required very little cleanup time since we only had four bells - I started singing this song, to which about half of the students joined in. I reminded them to ask a good “why?” near the end of the song. I then told them that it was sunny outside, and we ought to go outside. The students were very happy about this, and we proceeded to go outside while singing.
Simi Yadech	Review Dance
Outside, I led the students around a painted circle that was part of their playground. With all of the children standing on the circle itself, I had the students practice the chorus move that we had before - stamp, knee tap, clap, hands shaking in the air. The students were able to follow this just fine, and then I reviewed the other parts of the dance (heel, toe, moving in and out of the circle). I never quite told them that we were doing a dance from more than month ago, but I did tell them that they definitely were to try to find their way back to the circle by the end of the “stanza” portion of the song. I then had the students do the dance with the song. Mid-way through the song, I changed the “chorus” into a pair of stamps, knee taps, and claps (with a single wave of the hands), which the students followed without too much trouble. For the last “chorus”, I had the students try squeezing in a triplet of the moves, which of course turned into a bit of a fun mess. I’m very glad that I was able to revisit this dance, since for both classes I was really hoping to do it one more time. Doing it first inside (back in September) and then outside I think kept the activity fresh in their minds.
The Longer The Faster (Shenaningans)	Teach song
I had a little extra time left with the first class, so I decided to have the children try this activity, where a selected student walks to another part of the circle in 8 counts and chooses another student to do the same, all while the song gets gradually faster and faster. The students had a fun time with it, and with that first class, I asked the students if they noticed what was happening to the song. For the second class, I didn’t really have enough time, but I started it anyway, and we got through about half the song before the recess bell rang. They still also had fun with it, and so I know that I can use this as a backpocket activity in case I need it in the future.

For the first time, I didn’t use “show me” or “class” to recapture the focus of the class; instead, I simply did a few arm waves with the first class, and with the second class, I didn’t have to do anything! It was pretty refreshing!

Teaching Notes, K, 20140924

During last week’s class, I was able to get only one of the two classes to dance successfully, so I wanted to revisit that same dance again, this time earlier in the class. I figured that the class that managed to do the dance last time would have a fun time extending it a bit. It was also finally time to introduce the rhythm sticks to the class, and so I brought enough for all.

Fine Friends Are Here	Review song as well as hand motions
I started off by singing the song, hoping that some students would remember the answer, but few did. Similarly to last time, I only used the first four call and answers, and after the first iteration, I beckoned the class to answer with “Fine Friends are Here”. I also gestured to have them follow my hand motions. This was really meant to be only a warmup so after two iterations of the students following me, I moved on.
Introduce Rhythm Sticks	Explore how to play sticks
Every previous class involving rhythms sticks that I’ve taught always ends up with a lot of chaos and racket, and so this time I was determined to try to keep things as sane as possible. Before handing out the sticks, I talked about how people playing instruments always needed a resting position when we weren’t playing, and for us, it was to keep the sticks on the shoulders, one on each shoulder. I asked the students to pretend that they had sticks, and to show me that they were putting their imaginary sticks on their shoulders. The first students who showed that they were doing that and holding the positions got the first sticks, and that seemed to keep most of the students in line, as many realized that the resting position was their ticket to getting sticks - plus, I clearly wasn’t just handing them out to all of the students in order. After about 5 kids received sticks, I had the students echo the chorus to “Hello World” back to me; I had to do the echo twice before all of the students had sticks. The sticks-on-shoulders turned into a bit of a fortunate activity. Not only did it make passing sticks out easier, I also turned the phrase “sticks on shoulders” as a way to get the students to do exactly that. However, I had them repeat “sticks on shoulders” in the same way I said it, similar to the “Class?” response. That had the triple effect of (1) being fun, (2) getting them to respond, and (3) getting most of them to stop tapping when they weren’t supposed to. We first explored ways to tap the sticks - taps, rubs (both with the smooth stick getting rubbed and then the grooved stick being rubbed), hammer, clicking, rolling. I had the students try to follow me in a very slow beat, and similar to the MfM sample video on sticks, I sang “tap tap tap your sticks as slowly as you can” to the tune of “row row row your boat” - followed by a dramatically faster “tap tap tap as quickly as you can”; the quick half of that surprised a few, but it was so fast that students didn’t really get much out of it. Next, I had the students mirror my tapping three times. I then asked them to tap three times, but only when I was doing it. I proceeded to sing…
Bongo Joe	Get students to tap during the even measures
With the kids ready to do a set of three taps, I simply started to sing Bongo Joe, and then slowing down to tap the first three beats of every even measure. The kids caught on by the 4th measure, and seemed to have a good time tapping to some sort of song. Afterwards, I did have to use “sticks on shoulders” to get them ready again. Next I had them click sticks in sets of three, and I sang the song again. We did it one more time with three stick rubs.
Raisins	Have students follow my movements and taps
Next, I wanted to have the students play to a song that they likely had not heard before. I’ve used Raisins (from Barenaked Ladies - don’t worry - the song is perfectly kid-safe) in previous classes, and so I reused it here. Before starting, I had the students mirror me with various motions and sticking, and then I turned on the song. There’s a period in the song when the singer is whistling, and during that time, I moved my sticks behind my back and pretended to whistle. I still had the students in a circle, which made it a little challenging for all to see what I was doing, so I had to keep most of my stick motions higher in the air than I normally would. I also found my self constantly turning around so I knew that people could see me from all angles. In the end, I think the students were able to follow reasonably well. I collected the sticks by having the students echo the chorus to “Hello World” again, and it took two times through again to do it.
Simi Yadech (Shenanigans)	Teach dance
It was time do to the same dance from last week. This time, the first class was much more focused, and we were able to complete the dance with the same success that the second class experienced last week; the kids seemed engaged, and while there was the typical challenge of moving too far into the circle, the students were better focused when given the goal of trying to end up in the same space. However, to my surprise, the second class this time was all over the map concentration-wise, and I ended up punting the dance! As such, I no longer had to worry about staggered material between the two classes, but I really didn’t expect it to happen this way.
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Review chant, play passing game
I started chanting Bee Bee, and the students followed very quickly. Like last time, I also wanted to get the students used to pointing to either their knees or nose, in beat, and probably half of the students followed closely. I then told the students that I tried to find a bee, but I didn’t think that they would want a real bee in the classroom. And so, I brought in a fuzzy yellow and black tennis ball - bee colored - to represent a bee. I chanted one more time, holding the ball in front of a student, but moving after each “measure”. Now, the kids don’t really have a concept of a measure, and I didn’t explain the timing that I was doing, but I wanted them to get used to the idea of keeping the ball moving. I then gave the ball to a student and asked the students to pass the ball to the person next to them. To their credit, no one threw the ball - I didn’t even have to remind them not to. At the end of the chant, the child holding the ball was “out”, and so I had the person sit in the middle of the circle. At first I was afraid that the student would think it was an unwanted jail, but the students found delight in being out! We chanted again, with the ball moving again, and when the second person was “out”, the original person went back into the circle where the second person was. The students really had a fun time with this, and even though we didn’t emphasize trying to pass at a regular pace, the fun that they had was worth it. There are going to be other activities later in the year where students swap positions around a circle, and so it was good to see them welcome this sort of activity, without fighting for spaces.

Like last week, we ended with “Make new Friends” and “Goodbye my Friends Goodbye”. I think the students now expect “Goodbye” at the end of every class, and so I guess I have my closing song for the year.

While this class wasn’t meant to be the last class before break, it ended up being so, as my back flared up again, preventing me from teaching the next class. I’m hoping that this won’t be an issue for the upcoming 2nd term, as I have a lot of material to cover. See you in a few weeks.

Teaching Notes, K, 20140917

It’s week 3, and unfortunately, my bad back is still limiting me somewhat in terms of what I can do motion-wise. However, I was determined to try to get the students to do some sort of basic dance, and so I planned something for the kids. I’m still working on a mixture of day 1s for both curriculums, with a sprinkling of day 2 material.

I Like You	Kick off class w/ song, teach more variations
The students started seated on the carpet, and I simply started singing. A few of the students joined in quickly, but not everyone. I sang it one time through while using the ASL sign for “friend” at the end of the song; next, I taught the children how to sign “friend” in ASL, and I encouraged them to try to do the sign when “friends” was sung. We sang it one more time. Knowing that I wanted to do a dance that had the children tap their heel or toe on the ground, I then had the students practice that (e.g. “we will heel…”). It sounds funny, but to the kindergarteners, it made total sense. We then covered a few other motions before moving on.
Criss Cross Applesauce	Teach motions, chant, and variations
I initially started moving my hands in the air for the criss-cross, and then when it came to tapping for “pepperoni pizza”, I tapped on the ground for the first class. This turned out to be very difficult on the back, and so for the second class I modified this by standing up (while the children were sitting), and tapping on my knees. But through all this, I wasn’t saying anything yet. The pepperoni pizza pattern is something that the kinders didn’t pick up well initially (as opposed to copying my criss-crosses with my hands), and so I had them practice the pattern a few times. With the students sufficiently following the motion patterns, I then did the motions while chanting. A good chunk of the students knew the chant, and so they were able to follow very easily now that they had something familiar to follow with the motions. Next, I had the students recite the applesauce portion as if they were mice, which meant chanting in a really high-pitched voice. But, before they could go into the pizza part, I asked them what the opposite of “high” was, and to chant the pizza portion as if it were a humongous pizza. We did the same with soft and loud, and finally when I had the students chant the applesauce part slowly, I simply asked them what they wanted to do with the pizza, and they knew to chant that quickly. This is one activity that probably works better by teaching the regular version one day and then extending it with variations the 2nd day, but this is something that was found on day 1 of both curricula, and so I wanted to cover this completely.
Five Fat Sausages	Teach chant
With the students still seated, I first asked the students what season it was, and what the sounds of the season were. We talked about the wind, falling leaves, and other sounds. I then talked about frying sausages (yes, a weird segue, but the kids didn’t seem to notice). I had the students shake their whole bodies to replicate a sizzle, and with the chant covering “pop” and “bam”, I had them make a quiet-ish pop with their mouths, followed by a much louder clap and “bam”. Starting with 5 sausages, I had the students echo me for three of them, and then we finished the chant with the other two. Next, I asked the students to point out differences between “pop” and “bam”, and eventually I asked them how short “bam” was. I convinced the students that it was supposed to be very short and loud, and so we restarted the chant with two sausages.
Come And Follow Me	Get students to follow, then reset them into a circle
I wanted to get the students to form a circle, and so I used this activity to get them into first a line. The students were scattered all around the carpet, but the carpet does have columns of colors, so I had the students arrange themselves clearly in a color. Next, I had students of one particular carpet color follow me, and then I simply had the students try to mimic and follow the student in front of them. We then proceeded to walk all the way to the back of the room, and I kept changing the “motions”, although oftentimes they were simply different things to do with the arms. I did try to get the students to walk backwards, and that was probably the least successful of the motions that I had them do. Anyhow, I was able to lead the students back into something that sort of approximated a circle around the carpet. The students do sort of follow each other, but they will gravitate ever so slightly towards me, and so I ended up with a bit of a shortcutted blob instead of a nice circle.
Simi Yadech (Shenanigans)	Teach dance
I actually wasn’t using the dance recommended by the Shenanigans, but instead I was going to something simple - a dance where I would do a heel-toe-heel-toe, followed by 4 small steps towards the middle of the circle, followed by another heel-toe-heel-toe, and 4 steps back to the outside. For the first class, however, the students became very chaotic, and I struggled to try to get the students to follow directions, particularly when going into the circle. With time running out, I simply punted and moved on. However, the second class featured just enough less chaos such that I was able to get the students to try to at least scramble back to the outside. I convinced the students that it was a game to try to end up in the same spot outside the circle after walking back out. This song follows an A-B form, where B goes slightly faster. However, I didn’t plan on giving the students anything during the B form during this time, since I figured (correctly) that they would have to take the time to reset their position. However, partway through the song, I started having the students follow a simple pattern for the last bar of the B form - knee tap, clap, shoulder tap, hands in the air. As the students became more proficient with the pattern, I simply doubled it in the same time - two knee taps, two claps, etc. By that point the students were paying attention very well and focusing quite well on the pattern and getting back to their original positions in time for the pattern. As for the first class, I’ll definitely try it again, since I mentioned to them that in order for the dance to work, people have to follow closely.
Make New Friends	Teach via echo
With the kids seated again, this was a simple echo exercise. This isn’t the easiest song to learn, and so when it was time to put it together, I had the kids sign again “friends”, and a few other rudimentary (non-ASL) signs for “one” and “circle”.

For both classes, I did have to use Show Me, but I used it twice only for the first class. I also introduced the “Class?” call-and-answer to the first class, which didn’t seem to go as well as it did for the second class. When I tried “Class?” for the second class, a few students remembered, and I made it clear how happy I was that they remembered.

As I noted earlier, I’ll re-use the dance for the upcoming week. I might have to start staggering material a bit between the two classes in the event the second class starts to pull ahead of their first class compatriots.

Teaching Notes, K, 20140910

One of many great things about Music for Minors is that as a volunteer, you’re armed with plenty of songs and suggested lesson plans. With the MfM kickoff having taken place during the weekend, I discovered that the kinder lesson plans were once more revised. As a result, I now have two sets of lesson plans. Why is this good? I can now interleave the two plans together, eliminate duplicate material, and now I have lots and lots of ideas for the whole year. Yay!

And so, similar to last week, I wanted to cover many different songs and activities without focusing too much on one thing. After all, they are kindergarteners. However, I did want to try to review at least Oats Peas Beans. Here’s what happened.

Fine Friends Are Here	Immerse, then add kodaly signs
Before singing, I instead asked the students to mirror what I was doing with my hands - I raised them up, moved them in different random ways, and threw in some Kodaly signs. Most followed just fine, and even more importantly, the class was pretty silent. I then started to sing the song, doing the Kodaly signs when “Fine Friends are Here” was sung. The first time through, I didn’t really stop to let the students know to follow me, but before the second time, I did tell them to try mirroring my hands during just those words. I did this one more time (three times in all), and during the third time, I probably got half of the students to follow. I definitely had to slow down the song during those hand motions, which helped a bit. Finally, I then asked the students to sing with me while doing the signs if they felt comfortable, and during that iteration, probably a quarter of the students did it. This is something I’m going to use over and over again so I wasn’t aiming for perfection during this first time.
Marching, Marching	Get students moving
We’re going to be marching a lot during the school year, and I wanted to instill a sense of marching or at least moving together in sync. The students were still at this point sitting scattered on the carpet, which was perfect - I had them stand up, and practice taking steps in place, following my steps. I had to remind them to try to stay in place, so we also spent a little time examining where our feet were - that was our “home base”. And so, we started taking steps together, and it probably took about 8-10 steps before a majority of the kids were following me. With the kids now in rhythm, I sang the song. Marching, Marching allows for a lot of substitution of motion, and so I asked the students if they remembered what other things we did when marching in a circle. Some remembered that we jumped, and so I tried to get the kids to jump in sync before singing the corresponding song. Jumping is a lot harder to keep the kids together, and I didn’t try fighting the urge to jump continuously as some kids wanted to do. Next was tiptoeing, which was much easier. Last was sliding, and this also took some effort. We practiced sliding together in one direction four times, and then back to our original home base four times, allowing me to ask the students if they were close to their home base. (Most were not.) We then of course slid together to the song, going first in one direction (towards the front of the room) and then back.
Bee Bee Bumble Bee	Teach chant
I had the students all sit down again, and I started doing more hand motions just to get the students to follow me. Eventually I had them clapping with me, then tapping a knee, then tapping their nose, and then holding their hands out towards me. We repeated this, next with eight repetitions per movement, and then with four repetitions per motion. I then inserted the slow chant while continuing the pattern. After completing the chant, I asked the students to “follow me”, although I didn’t describe exactly what to follow; when I did the chant again, some followed my hand motions, some tried to say the chant, but just about everyone was trying to mimic something from me. I’ll revisit this again in a later class.
Oats Peas Beans	Review chant, teach song and in-place movements
I quickly transitioned to discussing gardens from the previous week. We talked about the things found in our gardens, and then I asked the students if they remembered what was in their garden. Eventually, the different kinds of produce were all mentioned, and I had the students chant out first just the items (“Oats, peas, beans, barley”), followed by the full chanted “poem”, which they did last week. However, I kept them echoing me, and for the second iteration of the chant echo, I sang the song. The students seemed to follow along pretty well; they already knew the words, and they were simply attaching a tune to the same words. We repeated the song-echo. Next, I then asked the students “If you were a farmer, how would you grow these oats, peas, beans, and barley?” I did get a few different answers, but most of them revolved around planting seeds, watering, and then eventually waiting. Yay! I then had them basically practice the 2nd verse of the song without talking about the 2nd verse; I had them pretend to plant seeds, then take a step back with arms folded, then stamp and clap (as an example of waiting), and then turning around looking afar. With the students now armed with basically an acted-out story, I then had them echo-sing the next verse. It worked quite well - we did it one more time before finally ending with another rendition of the chorus. However, this time, I had the students sing the chorus together. I realize that the chorus has no significant motions - I might have to add in some regular beat-keeping movements just so that the students aren’t suddenly still when singing the chorus.
Blow the Balloon (Ella Jenkins)	Teach students the story
I’ve used Ella Jenkins’ story about Padma from India and the Balloon song a couple of times now, and since there was a balloon-oriented activity I was going to do, I figured that this was as good as a time to use this story. The kids definitely seemed to catch on, even though the story is very short. But it provides a great segue to…
Bubble Time	Have kids explore spaces and being in a bubble
I had the students stand up, and pretend that they were indeed bubbles. We talked a bit about what happens when bubbles get too close to each other - they either bounce (more like a balloon) or they pop. I had them “add a little bit of air”, and I had the students pretend they were little bubbles. Adding more air meant that the kids had to find more space, and so I encouraged them to use most of the classroom. I did tell the students that I didn’t want them to pop, because then they’d have to sit down, but that didn’t stop some from gleefully crashing. :/ This particular exercise typically is done with a hand drum, but I didn’t have one; instead I had a small gong. I would tap, and then ask the students how, as bubbles, they would move around. Eventually I tried different rhythms, volumes, and speeds, and while I’m not convinced that the students really changed the way they moved around, they certainly had fun, perhaps too much fun. When we were done, I had them reseat themselves back in their original spots.
Slippery Fish	Sing with motions
With the kids seated again, I started moving my hands around, making a fish motion, and in the first class - some students automatically started singing the song! I did have to stop that, but knowing that there would be plenty of students who knew the song (and some who didn’t), I asked the students to first follow my motions, and sing along if they could. This was a pretty easy way to end the day.

I did introduce “Show Me” to the first class, although they really didn’t need it much again. I used it in the second class, as well as the “Class?” call-and-answer that I learned from the music instructors’ workshop that I attended during the previous weekend - that worked like a charm.

I had hoped to get the students doing another circle march/dance, but for time considerations, I ended up bailing on it; it’ll show up next week. I also did end the day with “Goodbye My Friends”, which most of the students remembered. I do plan on continuing to use a mixture of old and new lesson plans, and although I’m scheduled to teach 36 sessions, I feel that I’m going to have plenty of good material.

Teaching Notes, 20140903

After a bit of a delay, I’m teaching again! For the first time ever, I get to teach the same grade I taught last year - Kindergarten. This time, I have two classes every week. Due to an injury to my back, I had to push the start date a little later, but I’ll have plenty of opportunities to make up time with the kids.

Last year, I tried to stay in line with the standard curriculum for the first few weeks, and I’m hoping to do that more consistently this time around.

Hello My Friends	Sing while signing ASL
This year, I sang to the students while signing “Hello” and “Friends”. I was hoping that the students would follow the signs, but I only got a few giggles. I then had the students learn the song by rote, one piece at a time, and that worked just fine. We’ll start many future classes with this song, so I wasn’t planning on have the class perfect this quite yet. After I was done with the song, I asked the class in sol-la-mi to sing back “Hello Mr. Chen” as a way to get them to learn my name. Unlike in previous years, I had forgotten to print out name tags in advance.
Johnny Johnny Up	Get students to explore vocal range
In all my years, I actually hadn’t used this until now, and it turned out to be a lot of fun for the kids. They liked speaking really high and really low, and they enjoyed in general being very loud. While usually this is sung with an octave range, I kept it within a fifth (C-E-F-G/G-F-E-C), since I was teaching kinders. Adding to the fun, I had the students move up and down whenever saying “up” and “down.” I then also asked a student to come up, lend us his or her name, which we then used to substitute for “Johnny”. The kids *loved* this, and I did it one more time with another student.
I Like You	Get students to walk in a circle, follow instructions
I Like You is a pretty easy song to learn, and so to me it’s really a way to assess what the students know in terms of walking in a circle and listening to instructions. The students originally were sitting on a 5-colored carpet, and so I had students, color by color, to move over to one side of the carpet, forming a circle (well, a rectangle). Next, I wanted the students to start marching to the right, so I asked the students to raise their right hand. At this age, you pretty much get a slightly better than 50-50 split on right-left knowledge, and so I went around the room to make sure that everyone had that right hand up. I then had the students stretch out that hand to the side, and then point in that direction - also not an easy thing to do. With all of the students pointed in one direction, I had them practice taking small steps, which seemed ok until some students started bumping into each other. I had to make sure that they understood that if there wasn’t much room, they were ok taking the smallest step ever. When the students were proceeding at a slow but regular pace, I then started singing the song. I didn’t ask the students to sing along at first, but eventually as the song progressed the students started singing along. I substituted “I like you” with several different replacements and corresponding motions - jump, tiptoe, slide - while showing the students how to do each one (e.g. not too huge, etc.). Amusingly, in one class, when doing the slide, everyone slid in the same direction, making the rectangle move over a bit. We’ll definitely have more opportunities to walk in a circle, and we’ll continue to walk to the right.
I Can Sing Up High	Teach students the song and motions
I asked the students if they brought their instruments, and while most said “no”, and a few offered that they brought imaginary instruments. Eventually some students said that they could use their voice, and that is exactly what I had them explore more, even though we sort of did that already with “Johnny Johnny Up”. I then had them do the movements, followed by the song. I of course got to ask them what was in between high and low, and many students said “middle” to my delight. I didn’t do too many iterations of this, since we’ll definitely practice this again.
Show Me	Teach students the response
I was saving this for only when I really needed it, and it turned out that I needed to use this only once in the 2nd of the two classes. The second class followed this quite well, including the echo.
Oats Peas Beans	Teach chant only with clapping
I started with asking the students if they had a garden, and what they had in it. I’m pretty sure I got a mixture of real items in gardens and some from imaginary gardens as well. Each time we got an item, I had the students to echo in sol-mi “I like ____”. We went through tomatoes, strawberries, even legos (lego garden?) Eventually, I steered the items found in a garden to peas, beans, and then oatmeal - I asked if anyone could grow oatmeal in a garden. I next introduced the students to “barley”, which none of the students knew. Finally, I had the students say the four words, “oats”, “peas”, “beans” and “barley” while clapping to each syllable, pointing out that barley required two claps. After some syllable clapping, I then had the students practice the Oats song in a slow steady chant. The students seemed to follow well, even if they really didn’t know how barley grew. I’ll be sure to have the students try singing the song at a later date.
Itsy Bitsy Spider	Talk about sounds, sing song in various ways
I asked the students if they recalled sounds from the morning, and that was surprisingly difficult to get answers from them. However, eventually I was able to squeeze out of the students a bird and a truck or train. We talked about big booming sounds coming from large things, and tiny, tweety sounds coming from small things, and with that, I started singing this song - something that most of the students already knew. I asked the students to try to sing the song again, first as a teeny tiny spider, and then as a huge hulking spider. We ended with pretending that the spider was quiet - we whispered the song together.
Goodbye My Friends Goodbye	Immerse students into the song
I ended the day with this song, which was easy for the students to learn as the melody was exactly like the opener.

Because I’m following the standard lesson plans closely as well as last year’s kinder lessons, I’m probably going to be a little less descriptive with my findings, unless it was different from last year’s experience. From a behavior standpoint, the students did very well. This year is a little different in that I have two different teachers’ classes in two different classrooms, and the dimensions of the carpeted area are definitely different (it is larger in the second classroom). However, both seem to be very eager classes, and I’m looking forward to the year and teaching every week.

Teaching Notes, K, 20140618

So, an interesting thing happened - I couldn’t make my normally scheduled class on 6/4. On top of that, that class would have been the last class before the Spring Sing, and since I was going to be out of town during the Spring Sing, it was better for the other docents to be leading the class. The following week was of course the Spring Sing, which meant that we weren’t going to have a music class (and I was out of town anyway). This meant that the next class for me to teach, and the last class for the year, would be on the 18th, basically 4 weeks since my last class.

Similar to the last class last year, I split time with the other docent.

Fine Friends Are Here	Warm up students
This was one of the first mini-songs I taught the students, and so it was fitting to use it to kick off the very last class. There were only a few students who remembered the hand signs, but most remembered the response. We only went through this one time through.
Do Re Mi	Talk about the story, sing the song
Do Re Mi was a staple song used by the other docent, and while the students had sung it multiple times, the backstory of the song wasn’t made known to the students until now. We talked about the characters in the movie, and then we showed clips of Maria singing Do Re Mi to the children in the movie. As the song began, a few of the students sang along but most were fighting to get a glimpse of the video. After the video was over, we sang through Do Re Mi one more time.
The Freedom Bird	Story time!
I like to end the school year with a musical story, and this time I chose the Freedom Bird. It’s a pretty easy to follow story, with the opportunity for the students to respond over and over in the song. I like to model my rendition off of Bill Harley’s recording, which involves having the bird call as amusingly annoying as possible, which plays to the students’ delight. They of course loved the story.
Tomorrow	Teach chorus via echo
The remake of Annie is due to hit theaters later this year, and so I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give them an introduction to this song. Plus, I talked a bit about how this was the end of the school year, and sometimes we all need something to cheer us up if we’re missing our friends from school. This song is a bit on the complex side for kindergarteners even at the end of the school year, so I simply had them practice the chorus (“Tomorrow, tomorrow, …”). We went over the chorus several times, in pieces and then together. I then sang the first stanza (“The sun will come out…”), and then I had the students come in with the chorus. Now, to keep things simple I eliminated the part in minor that is in between the stanza and the chorus (“When I’m stuck in the day….”), and I don’t think any of the students who had heard the song previously noticed. I think the students did pretty well with the song; certainly they seemed like they picked it up more quickly compared to how they would have done at the beginning of the school year.
Razzamatazzama	Review
With the little bit of time left, we did Razzamatazzama one more time. I don’t think a lot of students really remembered it all that well, but it didn’t matter. And, just like the previous time we did this, I started with getting the students following my clap/tap pattern, followed by the song itself. And also just like the previous time, the students had a lot of fun with this.

Remember how challenging that first class was at the start of the year? I have to say, as the year progressed, and especially after spring break, the challenges that I faced with the students not being focused seemed to go away. I do feel that that is sometimes pretty typical of kindergarten in general - all of the children are going to be pretty unpredictable in their ability to focus and follow directions, and it definitely takes many months in order to get the students really school ready. Kindergarten to me really is an exercise in prepping the students for 1st grade, and a lot of that is learning how to be a student. I think I saw that evolution in the first class (and to some degree, the 2nd class, although they were always a little more focused).

That wraps up one more year. After this year, I can now say that I’ve taught every grade from K through 4 inclusive, and that’s a pretty good feeling. This year was also the first time I was asked by former students to sign their yearbook, and I got to do exactly that, adding a few notes to the signature. That certainly gave me a good feeling. I also had a few parents near the end of the year ask me about maintaining the love of music in their children, and usually I tell them the same thing - keep it fun, and keep singing with them. Music after all is something that one plays.

See you in a month.

Teaching Notes, 20140522

Today, I wanted to focus mostly on material for the kids’ spring sing, but I still had to find a way to do it and make it seem like it wasn’t a repetitive chore. I had also just completed a workshop with other MfM instructors about the use of ukuleles in the classroom, and so since I hadn’t been using it very much this year, I made it a point to play the uke again during class.

Today also featured a sunny day that wasn’t too hot, so I wanted to take the students outside for a bit. Similar to past classes that were partially outside, I had the second class do its outside portion first before going inside.

Teaching Peace	Get students singing as they gather
Teaching Peace is something the students all across the school have been singing during weekly assemblies, and so it was easy to get the students to sing. I didn’t really have to do any echoing until we got to the stanzas, and even then a lot of the students were able to sing along to this not-so brand new song. The only times when I had to emphasize parts of the song was when the students had “learned” to sing words that sounded close, but weren’t quite exactly what Red Grammar had intended. Anyhow, this was my chance to get the ukulele back into the class for a bit, and since I didn’t have to focus much on getting the students to sing with me, I could strum pretty vigorously. The students even were aware of the “sound-off” part, and they definitely liked the idea of marching to the song (some got up and did exactly that). Anyhow, as a warmup song, this was great.
Hole In The Bucket	Practice singing in call-answer
The students had been practicing this with the other music teacher on the off weeks, so I didn’t have to spend much time introducing anything. However, I did want to make things a bit easier, so I had pre-printed out sheets, each with a key word (or words) for a particular line in the song; for instance “straw” or “cut it”. The Henry parts were printed in dark blue, while the Liza parts were printed in red; plus, I had them separated into a Henry stack and a Liza stack, and in the order the words would appear in the song. Before we started singing, however, and even before I made it clear what was the next activity, I simply had the students read off all of the Henry words (in order), followed by the Liza words (in order). Of course, by the end of the Henry stack, the students knew what was going on. With the help of the teacher, we then directed the students to sing, given a key word or words, starting with the Henrys (boys). We were able to sing through this quite easily with the cue cards (coupled with the students’ pre-existing familiarity with the song), and so this was indeed a pretty easy activity. I did notice that we had a lot more Lizas in both classes compared to the Henrys.
I’m a Tall Tall Tree	Review, do movements and sing
I didn’t have a natural segue from the previous song to this one, so I simply asked the students if they were still growing things. Just like two weeks ago, we talked about the variety of things that the kids were growing in their backyards. Some mentioned tree fruits, and so I asked the students what kind of plant was growing apples, pears, and cherries. That gave me the window to start reviewing this song, starting with the roots, trunk, and branches (just like last time). The great thing is that at this age, you can pretty much follow almost exactly the same plan the last time, and the students will still enjoy it just like the first time, and the familiarity only makes the activity go faster. I walked the students through the first three seasons of the song (I like to leave winter as a nice surprise), and that allowed me to start singing from the beginning; the students quickly sang along. We sang through it just one whole time; there wasn’t a need to review it again today.
Tulip Song	Talk about growing a flower, teach motions, and then song
The Tulip Song is another song planned for the spring sing, and it turns out that the first class wasn’t familiar with the song. So, continuing with the garden motif, I then turned the students’ attention to planting things other than trees, namely flowers. I showed them the “motion” of representing a flower bud growing out of the soil that is part of the song, along with the other motions that are part of the song. Then I had the students echo me singing the song while doing some of the motions. At this point of the year, it is actually pretty easy to get the students to echo me, especially when talking about plants, since every kindergartener likes to plant things. We did this song twice through, and then, I had the students hum the tune while moving my hands either up or down when the song’s melody was going up or down. Ignoring the minor variations in each line, the song basically goes up-down-up-down, and I had the students explore this a bit by also having them move their hands up and down to the melody.
Plant A Little Seed	Review song and motions
Plant A Little Seed is not one of the show songs, but it’s such an easy followup to the other two songs, and the students hadn’t seen it for two weeks, so we spent time reviewing the song. In fact, the activity was exactly like two weeks ago, with the exception that we were moving a lot faster. But, again, at this point of the year, songs of this caliber go really quickly.
Razzama Tazzama	Immerse students into the song
Razzama Tazzama is something that works great for kinders, and I can’t believe I didn’t use this until now. This activity doesn’t require much introduction; I just had the students practice a simple four-beat clap/tap pattern, and then I started the song. The kids just followed along, and they had a great time with this. I have to remember to do this one last time before the year ends.
The More We Get Together	Review, and sing along
I had the students practice a 3-beat pattern next, and then I started singing the song. Obviously the children knew the song from past classes, and so this became a happy review. We changed the lyrics to clapping, then dancing, while also changing the clap pattern and having the students dance around in place.

It’s becoming clear that the students are feeling really comfortable with the show material, which made for a very easy lesson. Even the first class, which tends to be more raucous did well today, allowing the teacher to release the students a few minutes early for recess.

Teaching Notes, 20140507

In about a month, the students are going to be performing during the school’s open house. Even though I won’t be able to be there (I’ll be out of town), I do want to help prepare the children, which basically means that half of the day going forward is going to be used up covering the show songs. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for new material, and so for the remaining classes I’ll have to be pretty picky with what I have the students do.

Today also featured a sunny day that wasn’t too hot, so I wanted to take the students outside for a bit. Similar to past classes that were partially outside, I had the second class do its outside portion first before going inside.

My Bonnie	Get students singing as they gather
The students for the first class as they gathered around the carpet. The students really know this song now, so it was an easy song to get them started. I arranged the students in a circle around the carpet, and I had them remain standing.
Aloha Kakahiaka	Have students sing/hula to song
Each May I usually do something Hawaiian-related, and while I introduced the students to the ukulele before spring break, the song I used then didn’t go so well back in April. I’ve used Aloha Kakahiaka a few times in the past with the younger students, and it’s a great song for the Kinders. I started with asking the students if they went anywhere for break. No one mentioned Hawaii, and so I talked about how I had visited Hawaii during a past break, and then I had the students say “Aloha” a few times, once with a big Hawaiian belly voice. I had a MFM staff member observe this day, and so naturally I had the students give a big Aloha to her. (During the second class, I had the students give big Aloha to the other parent helper.) I then proceeded to have the students practice saying “Kakahiaka” and how Aloha Kakahiaka meant “good morning”. I proceeded to walk the students through Aloha ‘Auinala (good afternoon) and Aloha Ahiahi (good night), along with appropriate signs (ASL “morning”, making a sun with arms overhead, and hands together sleeping for night). Next I had the students practice a very simple hula motion with arms for “Aloha”, extending one arm, followed by another arm. “To you” shows up in the song several times, and so I had them practice a motion where both hands start at the hands and then extend away from the body. It was time to sing, and so I had the students simply sign and sort of sing along with me very slowly. The students were able to keep up pretty well. However, this exercise took a lot of time and I didn’t do it once through more than once.
Plant a Little Seed	Teach song by immersion, with movements
I didn’t really have a natural transition for this song, so after we completed Aloha Kakahiaka, I simply asked the students out of the blue if it was winter. Of course it wasn’t, and I kept asking about other incorrect seasons until the students collectively were shouting (in a nice way) “spring” to me. I then told the students that in springtime, it was a good time to plant things, and so I pretended to plant a seed into the floor; I asked the students to do the same. I then asked the students what to do next in order to make the seed grow, and while some students mentioned the need for sunshine, others noted that you needed water, and so I proceeded (along with the students) to water the imaginary seed. We proceeded through the rest of the song this way without singing, but instead acting out the pieces all the way up to the bees (which they had a lot of fun with). That was seed #1; for seed #2, I then had the students sing via echo each of the lines while performing the motions. At the end of seed #2, I then had the students do a descending body-solfege scale with the ending line (“spring flowers smell so beautiful”). We did all of this one more time through. I thought the students were able to follow pretty well, and they clearly remembered the body-solfege movements, even if they couldn’t recall why they remembered them.
Tree Song	Teach song and movements via echo
Transitioning from Plant a Little Seed to the Tree Song is very easy; all I had to do was to suggest to the students that my seed was meant to grow a tree. With that, it is pretty easy to do this exercise. I did this one season at a time, asking the students what was the next season, and then talking to the students about the activity (e.g. bending with the wind, etc.). This song sort of teaches itself, and the kids had no problems with this, even though it was the first time that they had sung it. This song starts and ends with spring, and so I used it to remind the students that spring would come again.
Boanopstekker	Review movements, retry dance with recording
Similar to past classes, I had the students sing My Bonnie while “rowing” to the outside. At this point, I had the students practice the same motions to the dance as they did in a past class - walking and counting to 8, walking to the center, waving, clapping, and walking back out. Knowing that the last time I did this dance I had students racing across the middle of the circle, I had the students practice taking tiny steps into the circle, which most (not all) did well. When it was time to play the music, the students were pretty ready to try it out, and they did quite well with it, even when I made a mistake and forgot to have the students walk in a circle after coming out.
The More We Get Together	Review song
The students had heard this song before, but since it was one of the songs that they will be performing next month (along with the Tree Song), I wanted to have the students practice this a bit. During the first class, I had very little time up to this point, so once Bonanopstekker ended, I immediately started to sing the song, and most of the students joined in seamlessly. After the first iteration, I had the students practice (while standing) a tap-clap-clap triplet pattern, which they did easily. I quickly got them to do the pattern continuously, and then I started singing “the more we clap together…”. During each iteration of the song I made it clear that during the middle lines they were gesture to themselves or away from them (e.g. “my friends are your friends…”); most followed well. The students happen to know this song in Mandarin, and perhaps they may end up singing it in both languages during the show.

The other song that is being planned for the Spring Show is There’s a Hole In The Bucket, but since I had planned for some outside time, I felt that I’d leave the Bucket for another class.

Teaching Notes, 20140402

Today was the last week before break, and I was hoping to do a bit of review. And, this time, I also tried my best to keep the two classes doing roughly the same lesson plan. I also on a very last minute decided to show finally the ukulele to the students, which led to some interesting results.

Fine Friends Are Here	Review song and hand signs as students gathered around the carpet
This has turned out to be a nice warmup for the students. Many remembered the response, but not so much the hand signs, so I spent some time having the students focus on the hand signs rather than singing, especially since for some the singing comes automatically. We went through this twice, and even though I sang incorrectly the same 2nd half of the stanza both times, the students didn’t seem to notice.
Ukulele introduction	Show instrument, introduce term
I had my ukulele, and I figured I might as well introduce it to the students, since I hadn’t really done much with toned instruments with them. (The other parent-docent had during other weeks.) We talked a bit of the origin of the work “ukulele”, and how that the instrument had 4 plastic strings. Normally I also have the students strum the instrument, but with the students were sitting scattered on the ground (as opposed to in a nice circle), I instead had the students simply echo me in the next song…
Eia Makou	Teach song in echo with ukulele
Having taught a little bit of Hawaiian (“uku” and “lele”), I then had the students echo me in this song. Initially, I had them get used to saying the words, “Eia makou”, and then we were off singing. During the first class, we sang the Hawaiian words through, but during the second class, I had temporarily forgotten some of the lyrics, which led to some awkward pauses and giggles from the students. No matter - we then eventually moved tot he English stanza; during that time, I had the kids sing “the kids of College Park” during the first line, even though it didn’t really lead to a rhyming stanza. The children seemed to have a fun time with the song, and I’ll be sure to use it again.
Cookie Jar	Replay game
I was betting that the students would mostly remember the Cookie Jar chant, and so I wanted to try keeping them in rhythm during the game. Before starting the chant, I had the students echo-clap me a few times, and eventually I got the students into a slow pat-clap-shoulder-shoulder pattern, and with most of the students following (not echoing at this point), I then started the chant. With the other parent in the room, I immediately said that she was the one who stole the cookie, which delighted the students, but also kept the rhythm going pretty regularly. Each time, I tried to emphasize the knee-pat on the 1st beat of each measure, and probably half of the students caught on. We were able to keep the rhythm going mostly uninterrupted for about 5 students; after that, the chosen student start taking longer and longer to choose the next one. At some point, the students picked their teacher, which was entertaining, but unfortunately the teacher also didn’t quite keep the rhythm going correctly. Oh well! Eventually the students were taking longer and longer, and I had them redirect the choice back to me, at which time I ended the chant again by admitting that indeed I ate the cookie. Not all of the students were picked during this exercise unfortunately, but no one was really clamoring that they weren’t picked; those who wanted to get picked found a way to encourage their peers to choose them at some point. For the second class I actually did this after the next exercise…
Rhythm Sticks	Have students follow me in stick patterns and song
With the help of the teacher and the other parent-helper, I started passing out sticks, to the tune Bongo Joe. However, this time I decided to pass out one stick to each student initially; fortunately, the sticks that I had featured red smooth sticks and blue ridged sticks, so I passed out only the red sticks. (I should have pre-sorted them to save time; for the second class, I did exactly that during the break in between classes.) Students always have an inclination to make noise with sticks; even with one they’ll hit them on the ground, or sometimes with their neighbor’s stick. And so, I had the students mirror my movements, and repeatedly emphasized a “ready” position, which simply meant a stick (or sticks, when they eventually got a second) on their shoulder. I then had the students move the stick to the song “put you stick on your head”, which has the students also tap the stick on their hand, or on the ground, etc. The song is to the tune “If you’re happy and you know it”, and several students knew it. No matter - the students kept up and were entertained; they also realized that hitting too hard also sometimes hurt, and that kept the energy of the taps limited. Eventually, we passed out a second stick (also to Bongo Joe), and after all of the students had a full pair of sticks, I had them practice making the sliding sounds properly so that they were rubbing the red stick against the grain of the blue sticks. I then showed them that they could tap the sticks together when they were parallel. (I didn’t have a name for this, other than a “light tap.) But I did have the students tap their sticks three times to the end of each line of Bongo Joe - light taps, regular taps, and slides. After the songs, I played a rhythm which was basically the first line of “Bee Bee Bumblebee”, and I had the students echo me. I had a set of preprinted slides of various rhythms (similar to what I’ve used in past weeks), and, pulling out a sheet of 4 quarter notes, I asked the students if the rhythm I just had them play was the one printed on the sheet. I got some mixed answers, and so we talked about how the four quarters were all the same; thus, they all had to be pretty evenly played. I had a few other sheets to show the students, including some with quarter rests, and one with 8 eighth notes, but none (yet) that matched the pattern. Eventually I showed them the matching pattern on a sheet - few students recognized that it was the matching pattern, and so I walked them through it. Voila - the students gleefully noted the match! I then had the students play the pattern together, and after two times, I started chanting Bee Bee Bumblebee; we finished tapping the sticks to the rhythm of the chant, and we were done!

And so, that ends the 2nd quarter, as the following three weeks are now spring break. Like previous years, there is going to be a spring sing, but this year I am going to be out of town, and I’ll rely on the other docents to lead the kinders in song. However, I do plan on reviewing the songs that the other docents choose, and so to an extent some of the material when I return will be already decided. However, I do want to retry Eia Makou, and the break is going to allow me to repeat other activities without the worry of over repeating. There should be no threat of rain for the rest of the year, so hopefully I can take them outside several times when we return for the remainder of the school year. I was happy that I was able to break up arguably one item (echo clapping) into pieces sprinkled around the lesson, and that seems to be an effective way to cover one activity requiring a fair amount of time without boring the kids. I also had roughly the same activities for both classes which certainly made things easy, although I had prepared to bring back the cookie jar for the second class, and introduce Penguins Attention to the first class. But, there’s always next next week!