Teaching Notes, 20160420

Today was a beautiful day - blue skies, perhaps a little on the warm side - perfect for going outside and doing a dance.  I also wanted to cover at least one old favorite with the kids as well as review at least one of the songs for the Spring Sing.

1. Intro: Teaching Peace.  I started singing this song with my ukulele, expecting the kids to follow along.  However, few did, and I was told by the teacher that this song was no longer featured as a Wednesday assembly song.  And so, I then had the students echo the chorus with me, line by line.  They did that, but I didn't try to sing without echoing this time around.  This was meant to be an intro; I'll try to teach them formally later.
2. Bow Wow Wow: I first taught the kids what amounted to a chant with the kids inside, and unpaired.  We practiced this a few times, and with that, I decided to take the kids outside while singing "My Bonnie".
3. Bow Wow Wow (outside): With the students in a large circle, I had them practice once, and then I demonstrated with one student what the dance/chant looked like with a partner.  I quickly then paired up the students, and then had them try it out.  Arguably, I didn't spend a lot of time, and I realized that with the children spaced out widely, explanations would have been more challenging than I had liked.  Instead, I wanted the students to try it, and they did the first time, with mixed results.  I quickly re-paired the students, tried it again, and it was a lot more effective, with most of the students understanding - and more importantly, the students were helping each other with the dance.  We then did the activity three more times until I asked them if they remembered where in the circle they started.
4. Seven Jumps.  I had the students, already in a circle, point to the right, and we decided to step to the right for 8 steps (with counting).  We also practiced the three claps and turnaround (twice).  I then turned on the music, and we were off.  The students remembered this dance from several weeks ago, and they loved it just the same.  I thought that being outside was going to be problematic when they kneeled on the floor, but the students were fine.
5. The Longer The Faster.  I had been playing the music through a bluetooth speaker connected wirelessly to my iPod, and with the iPod in hand, I decided to do The Longer The Faster on the fly.  I discovered that with the circle so large, it was actually very challenging for the students to make it to the other side of the circle in 8 counts, especially during the latter stages of the song.  Many students near the end had to take 16 counts in order to find someone on the circle. When we were done, we went back into the classroom to "It's a Very Good Day"
6. Tony Chestnut.  This was review, but I did the middle of the song twice since that was the least familiar part of the song.  The students are slowly getting it, but they still need more repetitions.
7. Jenny Jenkins.  This was one of the songs from last year's Spring Sing, and it's always a fun one to sing.  I used my same story of a kid who didn't know what to wear, and I easily introduced the song to them.  I used two colors (white and blue, which happens to be the school uniform) as examples, and then I had the students pretend they were the kid - I had the students respond with "no I won't wear..."  I then picked out two colors - red, green, and two students who happened to have a little bit of those colors in their clothing.  We then sang as if they were the kids, using their names, which they seemed to enjoy.
8. Exit: Goodbye My Friends.  The students returned to their seats.

I didn't practice The Milky Way this time, and so I'll want to do that for the next class.  It has also been a while since I had instruments in the class, so I'll have to reintroduce them.

Teaching Notes, 20160413

We're back from spring break, and the children seemed very excited to resume music again.  I was thrilled that students were also asking for activities that we covered several weeks ago (such as the Seven Jumps dance).  Alas, I did want to spend a lot of time on the two songs for the Spring Sing, and that consumed a lot of my time.

1. Intro: Choo'in Gum.  With the students mostly seated, I just decided to break into this song, and the students followed quite well with the response (chorus).  I didn't sing the bridge, and got through only two verses before moving on.
2. Tony Chestnut.  This is one of the two songs for the Spring Sing, and while students knew the first half, I had only covered the second half once in the past.  And so, I spent a decent amount of time doing the second half, and having the students understand each motion.  I personally am not the biggest fan of the second half of the song (and it feels like it slows down compared to the first half), but the students seemed to have a a good time with it.  We covered the second half twice, before finishing with the first half.
3. 2-4-6-8 Meet Me At The Garden Gate.  Before teaching the chant, I had the students practice a simple beat pattern: tap on the ground, tap on knees, clap, and waving hands in the air.  I then quickly taught the chant, and talked about any interesting commonality between the numbers.  We chanted while doing the beat pattern one more time.  Then, I took a egg toy from the classroom (I had forgotten to bring something that would be less distracting!), and I tried to have the students pass the object but only on beat #1 (the tap on the ground).  Students didn't really do this consistently, but at least we were, for the most part, able to get the object passed at some point in each measure.  After having the object go around the room (and strangely end up back with me), I then asked the class to guess where the object would land if we passed while chanting once through the poem.  Most students guessed right, and we did 2 more iterations of this before it was clear I had to move on due to the chatter in the room.
4. Milky Way.  This is the other song for the Spring Sing.  I had observed one of the other kinder classes singing this song, and I wanted to make sure my signs were consistent with the other group.  I did a very quick review of the first few signs, and then I just started singing and signing to the song.  This turns out to be quite a long song, but again the students were getting the hang of it.
5. Head, Shoulders, Baby: I simply started signing this, seeing if the kids would follow.  I then just sang away with the motions, and the kids started to giggle as they mimicked me.  After singing and moving together once, I then asked the students to guess what I was doing - I changed the motions to one where I was picking an apple.  The students failed to guess correctly, but we then sang it anyway.  I changed the motion one more time, but as of this writing I couldn't forget what the new motion was; I do remember that the kids were able to guess that one.
6. Close: Make New Friends.

For the previous quarters, I noticed that I focused on roughly one consistent intro song - and this time I'm going to try vary it a little more, considering that I have only ~10 classes left!

It's clear that the students, for whatever reason, seem a wee bit more mature now than before the break.  Kids at this age do change very quickly, and so perhaps by being a bit older they don't have as many attention challenges as I had earlier in the year.