| 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. | |
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.
