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.