Teaching Notes, K, 20150304

Every year, there is a "Spring Sing" where students led by MfM volunteers sing for the parents. There was talk about moving the Sing away from June and to May during another school event, but no matter what, planning for the event had to start. I do have a few songs that could work, and I coordinated with the other MfM docent to come up with a docket of potential songs that all 80 kindergarteners could sing. Today's lesson was mostly geared towards those potential songs.

The World Is Big	Review and warm up
Few kids remembered this song when I started singing it, and so I had to encourage them to echo. I had to break each of the first two lines into four parts for the first class, and so this became a pretty involved warmup. However, the kids eventually got through this - the entire song is echoed anyway, so they were able to follow well. I tried singing this for the first class in F (spanning C to C) which turned out to be way too high for a warmup song for me; I dropped it down to D (A to A) which was much better, and still within a reasonable range for most of the students. I sang this song with my ukulele, and took the time also to talk a little bit about how the length of the string, modified using the fingerboard, can change the pitch. It was a nice little distraction before we moved onto the main part of the lesson.
I Can Sing A Rainboe	Teach signs, first half of song
I Can Sing A Rainbow happens to be one of the first songs I ever learned when going through MfM training, and I have yet to use it in a class until today. This could very well be one of the spring sing songs, and it comes with a lot of sign language. I really do believe that ASL is a fantastic way of adding relevant motions to songs, and it also exposes the children to another form of communication. I had the students sign the first four colors, and then I had them echo me in pitch while signing. We did the same with the last three signs. I then followed with having them sing with me and sign the first half of this first half (e.g. the colors). I then sang the 2nd line, while signing "rainbow". After taking a short period of time to teach them how to sign "rainbow", I taught them one last sign: "too". We then practiced this first half of the song twice, both with signs.
This Land Is Your Land	Review, teach 2nd stanza
Simliar to last week, I had the students mirror my motions - I started with the first stanza, and then we sang it together. Next, I asked the students to go back into mirror mode, and I had the mirror my motions that fit the 2nd stanza of the song. After doing that twice through, I then had the students echo each line with motions with me. We did this twice through, then once altogether, finishing it off with the first stanza. I think the students were able to follow pretty reasonably well - the motions definitely help!
Jenny Jenkins	Teach the tongue twister, sing along
Since I had the ukulele, and since we had spent a lot of time singing about colors, I figured I'd bring out this song, which involves colors and is just plain fun to sing. At first, I asked the students if they knew what a tongue twister was, and then I gave them the example: "she sells seashells by the seashore". Of course the children had a tough time singing that, and so I then told them the story of a girl named Jenny Jenkins, who liked two things - tongue twisters, and colors. However (as the story goes) Jenny never could figure out what to wear, and she always had an excuse for not wearing certain things. I seem to really be able to captivate the students when telling stories, and this was no exception. I said the tongue twister from the song, and then I had the students speak (not sing) the parts of the tongue twister by echo, followed by echo-singing the parts. I didn't have the students try singing it all at once; I figured they'd pick it up a little bit at a time just by singing along. And so, I started singing the song, starting with white, then pink, blue, and green. For the second class I ran out of time here, but for the first class, I moved onto orange, red, and gray. I think the kids enjoyed this a bit, although they did struggle with the tongue twister, even if I slowed it down for them.

All three final songs are songs we are considering for the show. I have plenty of work to do in order to get the students ready, but I also have several classes left before the performance; I think they'll do quite well. There might be a fourth song, "I'm Gonna Mail Myself To You" that we might do; we did cover that song earlier in the year, but I'll be sure to review it. Since this week was a heavy singing class, I'll be sure next week to do something that involves something else, like dancing or instruments.