Teaching Notes, K, 20151203

I wanted to change things up a bit, so for today, I decided to change a few standard songs around, while also reintroducing both sticks and tone bells.

1. Intro: Hello, Ev'rybody.  I wanted to try a different introduction song, and this is one in particular that allows for a lot of different movement possibilities.  The students seemed to enjoy the movements, and some were able to pick up the pattern of the song.  I covered four different movements (clap, jump, skip, turn around) before moving on.
2. Bears and BunniesRabbits.  I moved directly to re-introducing the animals, and the students seemed to collectively decide that the two-beat animal was a rabbit, not a bunny.  This is actually fortunate, since I can now also refer to the animals by their first letters.  I had the students practice clapping to a few simple patterns.
3. Round and Round the Garden.  I took a bear picture and moved it around while singing, and the students quickly focused on the moving bear.  It is a pretty easy song to teach; the students learned it pretty quickly.  However, then I took the song, line by line, and tried to have the students sing the animal rhythm (e.g. "rabbit rabbit bear bear" for the first line), and the students seemed to understand what I was asking for, even if I didn't really explain it like I would to an adult.  I tried the same with Oats Peas Beans as well as Bee Bee Bumble Bee.
4. Rhythm Sticks.  I passed out the rhythm sticks, and with the sticks, we practiced a few different rhythms.  I did have them try rubbing the sticks together to make use of the channeled stick.  I introduced the "alligator" as the next animal, and after trying to stick to alligator (it's hard for kinders!), I allowed them to beat "alligator" on the ground; that seemed a lot easier.  I also introduced "butterfly", but I didn't spend a lot of time on it, since I wasn't about to embark on triplets quite yet.
5. Old Joe Clark.  I had the students listen to the song (performed by Dan Zanes and Friends) and I would call out stick patterns, and the students tried their best to follow.  This song is particularly long so we covered only about two minutes' worth of the tune.  I collected the socks while singing Choo'n Gum.
6. Tone Bells.  This time, I properly introduced the tone bells, and covered proper usage.  I then had students come up, two at a time, to attempt to play the bells on the beat.  Each time, I asked the students to play four beats and then I had the rest of the class sing a short song...
7. The Turkey Ran Away.  With a pair of students ready with their tone bells, I had the class sing this song (and its variants).  We covered three iterations of the song.
8. Closing: Make New Friends - indeed, I had a new song here, but the students didn't really pick this one up as easily as the other songs from today.  We sang it once through in echo, but then I simply fell back to using "Goodbye My Friends" - which also made the students instinctually return to their seats.

While I had the sticks out, I did try to get the students to think about sticks at rest, whether they'd be on shoulders, or with the blue stick out steady, ready to be tapped.