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.

Shake the Papaya Down: Visual, Chord root rhythm writing worksheet, and Garage Band projects

Lyrics and chord roots visual

Shake the Papaya Down lyrics and chord roots visual: you can download the free and editable Microsoft Word is here.

Shake the Papaya Down chord root rhythm worksheet: you can download the PDF for free here.

This is a great song for upper elementary because it has 3 partner songs, and the chord roots have I IV V I. You can have students sing the chord roots, label them as tonic, subdominant, and dominant, improvise rhythms over the chord roots, and even improvise with the chord tones.  After my 4th graders did their chord root rhythm composition, they worked with partners on a Garage Band project where they picked an instrument to play the chords, and they recorded themselves singing the partner  songs and chord root ostinato they composed.