Beehive!

A new melody for an existing chant (not sure who wrote the chant). First graders love this song and set of activities!

• Day 1: Start the students on an ostinato sung on the resting tone on macrobeats: "1, 2, 3, bzz, 1, 2, 3, bzz," having them tap the macrobeat on their legs for the first three beats and on their shoulders on the buzz. Sing the song over the ostinato.  If you are using the words the first day of the song, display the words to students with bees, sees, hive, and five underlined, guiding them to notice that the "bzz" happens at those spots.  Then, have 5 students pretend to be the bees, walking around the outside of the circle on macrobeats, gently tapping one student's should only on the buzz parts of the ostinato. Have the bees perform a major or triple pattern, and appoint five new bees, singing the last line of the song as you choose them.

• Day 2: Have students flow during the song as if they are bees flying in curvy pathways. Use this free TpT bumblebee animated vocal exploration SMART board file to have students explore their head voices between repetitions, having one student come up to the front to click the smart board and echo a triple meter pattern. For other repetitions, have students move the ostinato from day 1 again, changing which body part they sting themselves on for the buzz every time.

• Day 3: Use the song for a locomotor movement activity. Guide the students to explore curvy and straight pathways ("beelines" 😃) around the room. Have them fly high or low. Have them find closed or small shapes like they are the bees hiding, or open and large shapes like they came out of the hive.  At the end of the activity, ask the students to "fly back to their nests" returning to their spots.

Other ways to vary or spiral the activity to other grades, depending on students' skill levels:

• Have one student hide a toy bee around the room like it is hidden in the beehive as the rest of the students close their eyes. When the song is over, have students open their eyes and point quietly when they see the bee. Someone who pointed quietly will get to hide the bee next, and anyone who gets a turn performs a triple or major pattern.

• Use the toy bee to go around to students during the song, pausing after every line to "sting" a student with a dramatic resting tone buzz! Invite the student you sing to perform the resting tone as well. 

• Have students find the DO SOL MI patterns and sing DO SOL MI on solfege or on BUM BUM BUM in the song every time it occurs. They could also look at the notation for that pattern if they are ready for symbolic association, or they could replace it with different major tonic patterns that they create singing or writing and singing.

• Have students sing chord roots (DO DO FA DO, DO DO SOL DO) and possibly transfer that to instruments.

• Connect to the major tonic patterns in the song by playing the major tonic game. My version of the game: Students listen to patterns and jump after they hear a major tonic pattern, singing "major tonic," and they squat after they hear a major dominant pattern, singing "major dominant." If they are incorrect they sit down where they are and are out until the next round. Perhaps add subdominant in there since it is part of the song's progression!

Notation is here if you want to edit or display it in higher quality to your students.

Hello, Hi Hello: A Hello Song based on Hey, Ho, Nobody Home

This is a great hello song for classes musically ready to sing in rounds!  It's based off of the well-known, "Hey, ho, nobody home."

This song can be used for:

     ~4-part rounds

     ~Minor ostinati such as LA, MI, LA, MI (the song has a i V chord progression)

     ~Games where the teacher throws a ball to a student after the song or between lines of the song and the student sings the resting tone on LA or on BUM

     ~Moving macrobeat and microbeat simultaneously

     ~Students could create one movement for every 2 measures, then perform the movements as a class while singing. Then they perform the movements as a class while audiating.  Finally, they audiate a round while doing the movements, and then sing a round with the movements.

Day in the Park: Mixolydian song and movement activity

A new Mixolydian song and movement activity!  

Sing the song on a neutral syllable as students walk to macrobeats, then microbeats.

Have students audiate the resting tone of the song.  Then have them breathe, jump, and sing the resting tone when they land (feel free to add some story imagery here related to what they're jumping on at the park!). 

Have the students do the walking activity again, this time giving a high 5 the person they're closest to at the end of each phrase (the second half note in m. 4 and m. 8). 

Then, during the last repetition, have the students sing the resting tone as they high-5 the person they're closest to at the ends of phrases.


In other days with the song, let the kids use their imaginations to create park related movements to do!  Perhaps they can pretend to walk a dog on microbeats, swing their arms as if they're on the swings on macrobeats, alternate beats with their hands in high space as if they're on the monkey bars, perform vocal exploration like they're going down the slide...sky's the limit!

Let's Play in the Snow! Rhythm finding activities

"Let's Play in the Snow" from Jump Right In is a well-loved song for my students at this time of year!

 My 1st graders use it to create different movements based on different winter clothes they could put on (scarf, hat, snowpants, etc.), and once they know the song, they practice audiating parts or all of it!

They also pretend to build a snowman, echoing triple meter patterns or singing the resting tone as they put new pieces of the snowman on.

My 3rd graders use these files to practice finding rhythms in the song, doing the 3rd grade version of rhythmic dictation for some of these trickier rhythms!

File 1:  Powerpoint with rhythms for them to read first, then rhythms to find in the lyrics of the song.  This is their first introduction to reading quarter-eighth rhythms in 6/8 (DU-DI).

File 2:  SMART board file for them to practice dragging some of the rhythms to where they go as a class.

File 3:  Small group work where the kids take the cut-out rhythms and place them where they go in the song.  I laminated the paper and the cut-out rhythms so we could reuse them, but you also could have the kids cut and glue if you wanted.

All 3 files are here!  Enjoy!!!

Simon Sings!

Think Simon Says, but to help the kids think about the difference between singing voice and speaking voice.

You don't use the words Simon Says at all.  You simply give an instruction either using your singing voice or your speaking voice. The students are only to follow the instructions you SING, not the ones you speak in the game. If a student follows a direction you SPEAK, they're out and they sit down!

I like to improvise in Dorian or Phrygian mode to give the directions in the game. You also can sing tonic and dominant patterns in major or minor tonality, later adding in subdominant patterns. The purpose is for the kids to practice and for you to assess how they're doing with hearing the difference between singing and speaking voice!



Extension:

If my students are REALLY good at hearing singing vs. speaking (which my K and 1st graders are!), I make it even trickier for them!  If I sing the directions on the RESTING TONE, they should follow them, but if I sing the directions on ANY OTHER NOTE, they shouldn't follow them!  This helps me assess whether students are truly audiating which pitch is the resting tone!

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. :)

Who has the ___? Singing voice game

One of my favorite singing voice games that I've seen work WONDERS in bringing out kids' singing voices is based on the song Frere Jacques/Are You Sleeping.

Here is the original version of the game:

Teacher tosses small stuffed animals to students, or hides items behind their backs.

Teacher sings (to the tune of Are You Sleeping): "Who has the brown bear?"
Child who has it sings in echo: "I have the brown bear!"
Teacher sings: "Who has the dog?"
Child who has it sings: "I have the dog!"
Teacher sings: "Who has the black bear?"  (the hardest line to sing, so out of the 3 kids with turns this round, the child with the highest aptitude should get this one!)
Child who has it sings: "I have the black bear!"
Teacher sings: "Pass them on, pass them on" as students pass their toys to other students.



Here's a new twist on it with a focus on resting tone, for the younger kids who are still primarily focusing their singing voice work on finding the resting tone:

Same game as above, but the students sing "ME!" on the resting tone, instead of echoing the entire line. See below!

This can be done with ANY set of 3 items. Examples:
marker, pen, eraser;
rainbow, gold, leprechaun;
spider, ghost, witch;
tiger, bear, lion;
etc.!

I usually try to make the second item the one with the shortest name, because of the half note in the music in measure 3.

Happy singing! :)