Similar to last week, I’ll cover the first class first. Here’s what happened.
| Clap Patterns | Have students echo-clap me while they arrive on the carpet |
| I did this two weeks ago while students were gathering around the carpet, and so I did it again. I started simple (three even claps), but then I definitely threw in some faster eighth notes and some breaks to see if the students could follow, and they did. With most of the students’ attention now with me, I simply started to sing the next song… | |
| Victor Vito | Start singing, get students to clap to rice and beans |
| The students know this song well now, and so it’s easy to grab their attention just by singing the first few words. The original recording has two quick claps after “rice” and “beans”, and so after we sang through one stanza and chorus, I had the students try clapping after hearing those two words. We only practiced this twice, and then I started singing the second stanza. Less than half of the students clapped in at rice (the first of the two key words), and slightly more than half clapped after “beans”. I also slowed down the song right around those words; had I not, I doubt I would have had many students at all clapping since the word arrives so quickly.
We kept this up through the 3rd and 4th stanzas, and similar to the recording, I had slowed down (3rd) or sped up (4th) the tempo. The original recording also lowers the volume when slowing down, which often is an unintended side effect of slowing down with small children; I tend not to want to emphasize that side effect, but I used it anyway to see if the students could be quiet while singing (they could not, for the most part). Anyhow, adding the clapping was enough for the kinders to make them feel that this was something new. It goes to show that you don’t have to extend much in order to keep things fresh with the kindergarteners. | |
| More Clap Patterns | Have students echo-clap me while they arrive on the carpet |
| I had the students echo-clap again with me, ending with a simple 4-quarter pattern. I instructed the students to not worry about the distinction between claps and knee taps for this exercise; they could choose to do either. I had preprinted a set of sheets, each containing 4 beats’ worth of notes and rests (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5TYy9wcAkr6emplS0JFR0pXVEU/edit?usp=sharing), and I attached via magnet to the board the sheet with four quarter notes. I asked the students what the printing meant, and I actually got a variety of pretty good answers (4 claps, or notes with heads on top, etc.). I emphasized the fact that they were “quarter” notes, and that they were all even. I then replaced the sheet with a sheet of three quarter notes with a quarter rest injected in beat #2, and I asked them again what the weird squiggle was. They remembered that it was some sign for doing nothing, and I asked them how they would show me that they were doing “nothing” (e.g. hands out).
Whenever I brought out a new slide, I clapped the rhythm, and then I had the students echo me. I had two more followup slides where the rest moved to beat 3 or 4, and each time we practiced clapping (or tapping) the rhythm. I then told them that I could replace any of the quarter notes or beats with something that took up the same amount of time; I then showed them a sheet with a quarter note, a quarter note, two eighths, and a quarter note. A few students who clearly were taking music (usually piano) classes out of school knew what the other notes were, but I wanted to give the students the chance to describe the differences. Instead of going into the math of dividing a quarter by two, I simply told the students that according to the sheet, I was charged with squeezing two claps in the time-space of one. I called the notes “squishy” notes (I intend on calling them eighths in a later time), and so we practiced this a bit. Most students would clap the eighths as quickly as possible, and to I had to practice with them how to clap two notes evenly in the space of one beat. I then practiced with sheets where I had two pairs of eighths, followed by a sheet of eight eighth notes. Students really liked that last one, and I had a single student who knew what to do clap the pattern for the rest of the class. I had preprinted sheets that combined quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests, but I felt that we had reached a pretty happy point with the rhythms, and it was time to do something else now. And so, I had the students follow me in a 3-beat pattern (knee tap-clap-clap), followed by a 6-beat pattern. The 6-beat pattern, when echoed, easily gets the students to stop inserting a phantom beat after the 3-beat pattern. With the students now following the 6-beat pattern, I started to sing… | |
| My Bonnie | Sing, keep beat, and add movement |
| With the kids keeping a 6 (really 3) beat rhythm, I started singing My Bonnie. After we finished, I had to remind the students that it was indeed Bonnie, not some other variant. But, then I told them that they knew the words so well (which they did), that they could play the stand-up game, where on the word “Bonnie”, they were to stand up, and for other words, they were to sit back down. I got a few confused looks, but when I started singing, the kids quickly picked up on how the game worked.
The children absolutely loved this game. We played it only one time through, and of course they wanted to do it again, but you have to leave them wanting more, right? (I’m sure I’ll revisit this soon.) It was time to go outside, so next, I asked the students where Bonnie was. The students didn’t quite know how to answer, so I asked them if Bonnie was on the beach (“No!”), or in a car (“No!”). Then, the kids said that Bonnie was somewhere in the Ocean, so I told them it was time to sing and paddle at the same time; I led them, singing and paddling, outside to the usual large circle near the room. | |
| Boanopstekker | Teach movements, and then do the dance |
| I had the students walking in counter-clockwise, and when we were all around the circle (about two songs’ worth), I had the students spread out as evenly as kindergarteners can. I pointed out that they were walking to the right so long as they were facing the middle of the circle. I had them practice taking 8 shuffles to the right with counting, and then 8 shuffles to the left. I then walked the students through the part of the dance involving the middle (walk in, wave, clap, walk out). At this point, I started playing the music. Rather than try to dance from the very beginning, I let the music go on while I explained to the students to just follow my movements and commands.
We then started to dance, and the kids kept up well. The dance involving the middle is more complex than just walking around the perimeter, and there was the risk of students rushing towards the middle of the circle or not doing the motions quickly enough, but the majority of the students kept up just fine. The students seemed to find the dance entertaining, and some did ask to do it again. However, the bell for recess had already rung, and it was time to dismiss the children. | |
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!
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