Teaching Notes, K, 20150128

I felt it was time to try instruments again, as past songs like Here We Go A-Riding extend naturally towards rhythm instruments. If I could get the kids to play together, particularly the first class (which had troubles in the past), I’ll claim victory. Here’s what happened.

It’s a Very Good Day	Reteach, add snow
I started simply by singing this song, and the kids followed pretty well up to the point when one asks “why” - at that point, fewer than 5 kids in each class chimed in. I reviewed the break in the song and the arm motion, and we then re-sang the entire song once more. I then told the students that kids on the other side of the country were getting heavily snowed in; I then asked the students what their East coast counterparts would sing, and some students chimed in correctly. We then sang the snowy version of the song to acknowledge the other children who were enjoying the white stuff.
Head Shoulders, Baby	Review, add more funny motions
Last time, we only covered this song for a bit, and so I wanted to give the song its full due. I basically repeated last week’s version of doing motions, followed by motions with words, followed by singing and motions. After going through “Head, Shoulders” and “Knees, Ankles”, I then asked the students to “Find a partner, baby” - and most did quickly. With just about everyone paired up, we did the same two versions of the song, followed by “pick the apple”, and then “jump and turn”. For the second class, I also had them “throw the ball”, which they had fun with.
Here We Go A-Riding (first class)	Pass out instruments, Play song with instruments
I wanted to describe this individually for each class, since the experiences were dramatically different. For the first class, I first reviewed the song - we said “ding”, “all aboard”, and progressed through the other parts of the song. At this point, I had the students move into a circle, and I had them practice marching and stopping (“march and march and march and stop!”). With the students still in the circle, I had the intention of putting the instruments in the center, and I started putting a few there to make a smaller inner circle. However, I found myself reminding the creeping children to move back, as they all either wanted a closer look, or they were trying to grab the instruments. (In retrospect, I should have stopped right there and put the instruments back.) It took far longer for me to put the instruments in a circle, and I then had the students march a bit again. I then had the students point to the closest instrument, but I received a flurry of complaints from the students who said they wanted a different instrument. One student actually repositioned himself in the other side of the circle just to get himself closer to a more desirable instrument. Ignoring those complaints, I instructed the students to pick up the instrument that they were pointing to. Some said that they didn’t want that, and I told them that they didn’t have to play an instrument. As you can imagine, the class basically degraded from there into a cacophonous mess. I wasn’t able to have the students play in any sort of structured order at this point, and all I could do is re-collect the instruments after a minute.
Here We Go A-Riding (second class)	Pass out instruments, Play song with instruments
I had to try something differently with the second class, and so after reviewing the song with them, I then picked out a single student with a bell. I cut the “dings” down to 4 dings, and I had the student play along with me (and the rest of the class, with their voices) 4 times. I then handed out a few more bells to a few more students, huddled them together as my bell section, and we all practiced again, 4 times. I proceeded to have the entire class sing “All Aboard” together, but when it was time to do the “choo choo”, I broke out a pair of sand blocks; as the students made the choo choo sound, I sanded the blocks in beat. Just like I had done with the bells, I had a few students come up and be the sand block section. I repeated this with rhythm sticks and tone blocks for the “clickety clack”; and finally, for the “wooohooo” at the end, I formed a tambourine section with the remaining students. Each time I added a new section, we restarted the song as a group. This did mean that the students in the last sections didn’t get to play their instruments as much, but at least the class played together. We did the song twice before I collected the instruments - and this time, I was able to ask in sol-mi “who has ‘bells’” in order to get the students to return their equipment in a semi-orderly fashion.
John The Rabbit	Review, re-sing
For the first class, I used this as a way to regroup the students, and at least cover some material in an orderly fashion. It was plain old review - the kids enjoyed it, and I think the parent volunteer, after witnessing the chaos, also was relieved to see that the kids were going to be ok. In order to keep the classes parallel, I decided to do John the Rabbit in the second class a well, which also worked fine as a review. I received some interesting questions after covering the 2nd and 3rd stanzas about the animals in the song.

For the second class, I was able to cover a tiny bit of “Hey Betty Martin”, substituting “little children” for “Betty Martin”. However I didn’t get very far before the bell rang, and so I’ll be sure to use it for next time.

Part of me is really interested in trying instruments again very soon, although that would likely involve diverging the two classes, which I would rather not do. However, I am determined to try to get the students to play instruments together, in an orderly fashion. It can be done - I just have to find the right solution for them.