Hello, the Telephone Rings!

My students love using toy phones for this! :)

This song can be used for:

• Melodic improv conversations (each singer with a toy phone)
• Duple improv conversations with syllables
• Tonal pattern improv: “Hello ___” “Hello ____”
• Minor resting tone or patterns, with or without syllables
• Adding a RE RE DO RE ostinato to the Dorian version
• Changing the tonality of the minor version to major

 

Someone Special Gets the Drum

This is my Dorian version of a classic elementary song (the original version is mostly SOL-MI if I remember correctly).

Use this song for:

•     Moving to macro and micro
•     Rhythm pattern creativity with syllables
•     Drum exploration
•     Rhythmic ostinati

This post also has a video that includes an activity with this song!

Forest: Dorian tune and activities

Another new tune for you!  

Activity ideas: 

• Do a story-related seated or locomotor movement activity: What could the hiker see next in the forest?  Should we pretend it's a scary forest at night (with Halloween characters) or a sunshine-filled forest in the day (with different animals)?

• Have students move macrobeat and microbeat simultaneously, both stationary and locomotor
• stationary (macro in heels, micro in fingers tapping different body parts)
• locomotor (macro with feet walking, micro in hands patting)
• The locomotor activity can have kids take turns taking "a walk through the forest" by crossing the circle. The class stays on the edges of the circle, and the teacher says "[student's name], ready go!" and the student crosses to the opposite side of the circle with this locomotor movement with macro and micro going at the same time in their walking and their patting.

• Pair with duple patterns, group and individual

• Do AB or ABA movement opposites: measures 1-4 staccato flick motion or flow with pulsations, measures 5-7 legato side-to-side motion with hands or swaying whole body.  Measure 8 could be back to staccato, or still legato, depending on teacher preference and student age.

Holiday hello song #2: based on Sing We Now of Christmas

A 5/8, secular, hello song based on the Dorian tune "Sing We Now of Christmas."  The Noteflight notation is here if you'd like to adapt it for yourself.


Some possibilities for classroom activities with the song:

• You could do the song in duple or triple meter instead of 5/8 and use it to have students echo specific LSA patterns in between repetitions of the song.  

• You could do the song without words for early childhood or lower elementary classes.

• Olaf activity: 

• Take a snowman prop and pretend he’s Olaf from Frozen. Tell the students we have to tell Olaf with our “BAH” rhythm words that he’s going to melt in summer! Olaf will say something to you, you repeat it back to him to tell him about how snow can’t be warm. Students echo rhythms after Olaf on "BAH.

• Decorating a Christmas tree activity: 

• Have students sit and move with flow like they are putting a string of lights around a tree.  
• Explore different levels of space based on how students are decorating the tree: 
• flow high to put the star on, 
• flow low to put presents under tree, 
• flow medium-high to put ornaments on,
• do ABA to combine star and presents with motion going high when song is high and low when song is low

•  Lift hands and put them down to sing 5-1.
•  Singing 5-1, individual students sing after the teacher: 
• “touch the top of the tree, bottom of the tree” 
• “ceiling, floor” 
• “head, toes” 
• “high, low”
• Students pretend to put something on the tree and "touch the tree" as they echo a tonal or rhythm pattern after the teacher.
• Repeat the song again, pretending to put more decorations on the tree with flow or beat movement.

o