I do this with the song "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," as a way to take a song from my school's holiday sing-along and make an MLT classroom activity out of it. You could also substitute any Christmas song for it. Here's the game:
- All students sit in the circle and keep the beat to the song. Choose 1 kid to be the first Santa. Santa creates a major tonal pattern (at Aural/Oral or Verbal Association, whichever level your students are at), and all students repeat that pattern after Santa.
- Then everyone except Santa closes their eyes, and Santa chooses one of two very small toys to hold in their hand. This could be any 2 items small enough to fit in a child's hand; I use two tiny polar bears, one with red on the bottom and one with green. One of the toys represents "Naughty" and the other represents "Nice." (With the 2 toys I use, the red polar bear is naughty and the green one is nice.)
- Santa hides the toy they picked in their hand, and the teacher hides the toy Santa DIDN'T pick in the teacher's own hand.
- Then Santa walks around the inside of the circle to the beat of the song as all students sing. Santa can even move as if they're carrying a heavy bag of toys, adding heavy movement exploration to the activity. At the end of the song, whoever Santa lands in front of guesses whether Santa has the Naughty toy or the Nice toy in their hand. If they are right, they get to be the next Santa. If they are wrong, the same kid gets to be Santa again. After they guess, whether they're right or wrong, they share their own tonal pattern for the class to repeat!
- If the guesser was wrong, all kids close their eyes again and the same Santa gets to either change which toy they have or keep the same one. If the guesser was correct, the guesser is the new Santa and picks the toy as all kids close their eyes!
No comments:
Post a Comment