Mrs. Potatohead activity for finding singing voice

 I'm sharing a few activities I haven't posted yet!  This one is a favorite of 1st graders and is excellent for including individual response to help them find singing voice. You can even include a guesser trying to figure out who sang one of the items to make a game out of it!

I've used it on informances in the past, including having student leaders singing the call part at the end. As the kids are still passing pieces of Mrs. Potatohead to someone else who is closing their eyes and moving with flow, after the Mrs. Potatohead song as shown below is done, I pair the song with the Mixolydian song "Tiptoe" from Experimental Songs and Chants without Words.

A clearer version of the notation can be found here.

Niño Querido: A Round from Spain

A beautiful lullaby and round that you can use in English or Spanish (or without words, especially if you were using this with early childhood). A song with only I and V7 chords, so you can have the kids add Orff instrument parts on top of it (D, D, A, D) or sing the chord roots/chord tones in harmony (DO-DO-SOL-DO, MI-MI-FA-MI, SOL-SOL-SOL-SOL).

Noteflight notation is here.

7 Habits songs: Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Habit 7 version 1: song

This is a 4-chord song written to sound like a pop song to fit the theme of having fun and renewing yourself, which defines Sharpen the Saw. :)

A cute rhythm creativity, chant composition activity. Great for Orff teachers too because the kids compose 4-measure chants listing their favorite things to do when they Sharpen the Saw. 

Student creativity for the song:  Students create their own chants listing 4 things they do to sharpen the saw.  Perform as a rondo: in the A section everyone sings the song, in the B/C/D/etc. sections each small group performs their 4-macrobeat chant twice.

Noteflight notation for version 1 of the song can be found here.

Habit 7 version 2: duple chant

Habit 7's chant notation is on Noteflight here.

Habit 7 version 3: longer song

In this version as well, students create 4-macrobeat chants listing what they do to sharpen the saw.
Noteflight notation for version 3 of the song is found here.

7 Habits songs: Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood

Habit 5 melody notation is here.

Habit 5 arrangement with Orff ostinato and chords is here.

This one is a 2-part round...to help kids practice seeking first to understand, then to be understood. ;)  (Because they have to listen to the other part before coming in, and both parts have to listen to each other for it to sound beautiful.)

You can put the ostinato with the song vocally or with instruments, or even change the ostinato to include different chord tones.

7 habits songs: Habit 1: Be Proactive

This year my school is starting to be a Leader in Me school, teaching the students the 7 Habits of Happy Kids (/Highly Effective People) as our character ed program.

So I decided that one way I am going to teach these habits in the music classroom is through a short song for EACH individual habit. Here's Habit 1!
The other 7 Habits songs are all here.

Habit 1 melody notation is on Noteflight here.

Habit 1 melody + ostinato notation is on Noteflight here.

This song has entirely I and V chords, so you can layer it with tonic/dominant ostinati (one example is below), put the with Orff instruments, have kids improvise over the chord roots....you name it!

The song also leaves 3 beats to audiate after "Stop and think," so you can work on audiating rhythm or dominant as well. :)





The YouTube recording here is my favorite ALL-7-habits song. So cute!

Frozen outtakes: Mixolydian round!

"Spring Pageant" from Frozen's outtakes is a GREAT Mixolydian round for kids!  See the first minute of the video above.  In my 2nd grade classes this year, we used just the first stanza (ending at the first "Spring's good and winter's bad"). We also sang it in E major to fit the students' voices better than the original C major.


Here's what my students did with this song:

• listened to the original recording, imagining the characters from Frozen singing it
• created macrobeat movements as if we were different Frozen characters (your students will have zillions of ideas for this!)
• used rhythm sticks on the beat pretending they were Frozen characters: make your rhythm stick Olaf plodding through the snow, Cristoff reining in the reindeer on the beat, Elsa creating snow....
• sang "Brr" on the resting tone as an ostinato; the kids on the ostinato and me on the melody
• sang "Ding-dong" on scale degrees 5-1 as an ostinato, as well as other tonic ostinati using the words "ding-dong" or "ding-ding-dong"
• split the class in half, with half the class singing an ostinato and half the class singing the melody
• sang the song in a round with them going first and me going second, then reverse
• sang the song in a round, just the students without me (in 2 parts; for 2nd grade I was very impressed!!)
• played ostinati on Orff instruments with the song
• the students composed their own 4-beat ostinati on Orff instruments using tonic pitches

Whether the Weather round + rhythm creativity FREE DOWNLOADS

I love "Whether the Weather" because you can do SO many things with this song. This year, my 2nd graders used this song to...

• experience and move to triple meter
• sing a tonic ostinato + the song for the first time
• sing in a round for the first time
• play Orff instruments with the song (using the notes D and A in various patterns and borduns)
• create, individually, their own short patterns using D and A on the instruments
• create, in groups, their own ostinati chants using weather words and the cards below
• perform the song and their ostinati in a rondo form

My AWESOME mentor teacher even used this song in a concert with singing and Orff instruments. So many possibilities.... :)

Here is the song:

Using the rhythm cards below, the class first read the rhythms using DU-DA-DI syllables and then saying the words in rhythm.

Then students broke into their small groups (4-5 students per group) and I handed each group a set of cards, with 2 of each of the cards below.

The groups created their own arrangement of 4 of the cards to create a 4-measure chant: for example, "Rain, Tornado, Hurricane, Rain."  Groups practiced their own chant in rhythm on its own, and as an ostinato chanting it as the rest of the class sang the song.

For the grand finale, the whole class performed a Weather Rondo!  The form went like this:

• A section: All students sing "Whether the Weather" 
• B section: Group 1 perform their 4-measure chant 
• A section: All students sing "Whether the Weather"
• C section: Group 2 perform their 4-measure chant
• A section: All students sing "Whether the Weather"
• etc.!

Images of the rhythm cards used in the activity (download the cards at the bottom of this post!):

And, last but not least, the lyrics with pictures:

Download the weather rhythm cards for free here.
Download the lyrics (with pictures) to "Whether the Weather" here.
Download the sheet music to "Whether the Weather" on Noteflight here.