Hop, Hop, Hop: Lydian Easter bunny song

Also out of season for this, but of course you could perform it without the words for your students. This is another Lydian tune I wrote to an existing chant, Hop Hop Hop. It works well as a movement activity with students hopping in different ways (for example direct and indirect pathways, on macrobeats or microbeats, or discovering the difference between hopping and jumping) around the room!

Echo songs, camp songs, and just-for-fun songs :)

As the year comes to a close, some of us may need some just-for-fun songs for our students. Most of these have something very easy for kids to pick up on right away, whether it's the echoes or the call and response or the movements. Enjoy!

Echo songs/call and response songs

·      Down by the Bay

·      My Aunt Came Back

·      Mama Llama

·      Moose song

·      A rig a bamboo

·      Charlie over the Ocean

·      John the Rabbit

·      Hill and Gully Rider

·      And the Sidewalk Went All Around

·      Wise Old Owl

·      I Got a Letter this Morning

·      Banana Boat Song

·      Scotland’s Burning

Camp songs/action songs/ other just-for-fun songs :)

·      Baby Shark

·      Bumblebee

·      Peanut Butter and Jelly

·      Father Abraham

·      Boom chicka boom

·      Rattlin’ Bog

·      Too-dee-ta

·      Jack, Can I Ride?

·      Apples and bananas

·      Aiken Drum

·      Alligator Pie

·      A Rick Tick Tickety Tick

·      One Bottle of Pop

·      A Ram Sam Sam

·      5 Little Monkeys

·      5 Green and Speckled Frogs

·      Do your ears hang low?

·      Welcome back to school, can you clap?

·      Head Shoulders Knees and Toes

·      This is a Story about Sammy

·      Little Bunny Foofoo

·      5 Little Monkeys

·      Here We Go Looby Loo (similar to Hokey Pokey)

·      Shake, Shake, Shake; or Shake My Sillies Out

·      Clapping Land

·      Ant Dance, or Action Leader

·      A-Hunting We Will Go

·      Wa-da-li-a-cha

·      Riddle Ree

Here is a powerpoint I made at the end of last school year with several camp songs' lyrics!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WKc6MzepTu438GmIzydBQ-Z_Xwg92l4v/view?usp=sharing

Video of 2nd graders reading triple meter rhythms

Students are reading rhythms from the St. Patrick's Day shamrocks that are posted on this blog!

Shamrock triple meter rhythms to read!

See here for shamrocks with 6/8 rhythms!  They are all macrobeat/microbeat rhythms, including all of 3 patterns from the first triple meter LSA.

Print on green paper and laminate!  Here's what my 2nd graders did with the shamrocks this year:

• They read the patterns together by the SMART board first, then they went to stand in the circle and I spread the shamrocks out around the circle. 

• You can use any triple meter Irish song with this activity. We used "Leprechaun, Dance for Me" changing the words so they said, "Look at the shamrock, what do you see? Leprechaun, leprechaun, read for me."  During the song, the students did a real Irish dance movement (hop-step,step,step, hop-step,step,step) to move counterclockwise in the circle.

• When the A section with words ended, students stopped the movement around the circle. While the B section without words was going, students looked at the shamrock closest to where they were standing and audiated their rhythm. When the song was over, I would chant one of the rhythms.  If that was the rhythm on a shamrock a student was standing closest to, their job was to repeat the rhythm.  Hold up the shamrock and ask the class if they agree with how those students read the rhythm.  Repeat until all rhythms have been read!

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

All Around the Daffodils game

Materials:  2 fake daffodils

Students stand in a circle, holding hands up. Two students get fake daffodils that they will give to other students. The 2 students weave in and out of the circle, finally landing in front of someone at the end of the song. The person they each land in front of sings the resting tone of the song and gets the daffodil. Then they weave in and out of the circle, landing in front of someone else!




Alternative movement from http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/easter-spring-song-daffodils/ :

The children stand in a circle and hold hands up high to form arches or windows. One child  is chosen to hold the small bunch of (fake) daffodils, and starts to weave in and out of the windows. As the words ‘just choose me!’ are sung, the first child takes the hand of whoever is the closest, and then the two children carry on going in and out of the windows. The song is repeated until all the children are holding hands in a long snake, an adult can make a bridge against the wall, and then they all go round and under the bridge for a last time.  

Hiding Eggs: Easter song and game!

Easter Game:

Teacher passes out plastic Easter eggs, one per child.  Students can hide them in one of 4 places:  in their lap, behind their back, in their hands, or in the bottom of their pant leg.  Teacher turns away from the class and sings the song as students hide their eggs (in my classes, we only used verse 1).  The teacher turns back toward the class when the song is over, and guesses where one student's egg is.  Then that student sings the resting tone of the song.

If the teacher gets it right, the teacher gets 1 point.

If the teacher gets it wrong, the class gets 1 point.

If the student uses their best singing voice for the resting tone, the class gets 1 point.

If anyone in the class is talking during the music, the teacher gets 1 point. ;)

Then the students hide their eggs again as the teacher turns away and sings the song.  The teacher guesses another student's egg's hiding place, and that student sings the resting tone. The game continues until either the teacher or the class get to 10 points! Whoever gets there first wins! 

Side note: Kindergarteners love this because they love tricking the teacher and beating the teacher in a game!  And as long as my students aren't talking, giving me points, the class pretty much always wins. :)