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. | |
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