Teaching Notes, 20150826

And, we're back!  It's another great school year, and for the third year in the row, I'll be teaching kindergarten.  I also only have one section of K this year, and that hopefully will make things a little easier as my work schedule has become a bit more complicated this year.

I'm also going to scale back this blog a bit more, since at this point I'm mostly going to be repeating a lot of the same material, with a minor adjustment here and there.

1. Opener: Hello My Friends, Hello.  I first started to sing this song, and then I decided to sing "My name is Mr. Chen, what's your name" in sol-mi(-la).  After the first few answers, I asked the students to respond also in sol-mi, and about a third of the kids were able to do this.  During this time, I discovered that the kids are a very bright, active, and observant bunch, and they even tried changing their names on me when it was their time to respond.
2. Johnny Johnny Up.  I did this first by chant, and then singing (C-E-F-G / G-F-E-C), having the students stand up or sit down when "up" or "down" was spoken.  This was a blast.
3. I Like You.  I wanted to get the students into a circle, and so I told the students to try to follow me as I tapped their shoulders.  I ended up getting the kids in a pretty good circle around the carpeted area, and then I had the students sit down.
4. Show Me.  This is an attention-reset short song, but so that the students would know in the future what to do, I had the students echo me on this activity twice.
5. Voice Exploration.  I asked the students if they brought their instrument, and while they mostly said "no",  I then had them try to make low and high sounds while keeping their hands on the front of their necks, or on top of their nose.
6. I Can Sing Up High.  After talking about high and low, I asked them what was in-between.  Most kids knew that the answer was "middle", and that allowed me to segue into the song.
7. Oats Peas Beans and Barley.  I had the students talk about the items in their garden, and we ended up practicing sol-mi for a few more times.  Eventually I talked about oats, peas, beans and barley growing in my garden.  I then had the students create a beat by patting their knees, while I chanted.  I had the students then echo this for me once through.
8. Itsy Bitsy Spider.  In retrospect I could have saved this for next week, as I had originally planned to have the students explore different animals and their sounds.  However, I went right into this, having the students (who all knew the song) follow me.  I then had the class pretend that the spiders were really small or really big - we repeated the song with voices to match the sizes.  I then asked the students if spiders were quiet or noisy, and we finished off by whispering the song.
9. Goodbye My Friends, Goodbye.  I'll use this as a regular goodbye song, and I simply sang this to them.  A few students caught on, but I didn't want to present this as something for the kids to practice immediately.

This year's class definitely seemed to want to fiddle more than last year, and so I probably have to make it a point to change the activity constantly.