| 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. | |
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.
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