Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Five Eggs


Spring is one of my favorite times of year - each morning on my walk I hear birds singing and see rabbits hopping on fresh sprigs of green grass.  And the flowers! Well, if you know me at all, you know how much I love flowers and especially irises.  I have so many flowers planted around my house and particularly love the 20-something varieties of iris I currently have!  

This is a perfect rhyme and fingerplay for spring.  


Fingerplays are so underrated! Teach them to younger students as a fingerplay but bring them back to teach or reinforce rhythmic elements in first grade and as a canon experience for second grade, or add a So Mi or So La Mi melody, eventually adding in an ostinato or two.  Transfer the rhyme and ostinati to non-pitched percussion, add timbre changes for each line and allow the students to decide how to perform it.  For older students, use these as a basis for melodic improvisation or to walk the beat while clapping the rhythm or add a B Section with the names of egg layers - birds, fish, insects, turtles, platypus, echidna, reptiles, and lizards.  Or have small groups of students create a movement story of one type of animal and perform for other groups to guess the animal.  So many possibilities!

For a better image, click here. 















Enjoy! 



Wednesday, February 7, 2024

See the Dragon Come

 See the Dragon Come has long been a favorite song and I finally got around to making two different sets of simple 2-beat building bricks for young students- one cartoon version, one traditional Chinese papercut version.  

Click here for the link and note this will force a copy. 























Enjoy!




Wednesday, January 31, 2024

One Dragon

 Most of you know my family is Chinese American- my daughter was born in China and adopted into our family when she was 18 months.  We celebrate Lunar New Year and love this special and festive time of year.  

This year is the year of the dragon!  My amazing friend, Melanie Kang, recently published her book, Lions, Lanterns, and Ribbons with Beatin' Path Publications.  It is a delightful book and makes Chinese and Mandarin-language songs accessible, playful, and purposeful.  I was honored to be her editor on the project.  Click on the picture to check out the book - available in print or as a download-able e-book!  


Melanie and I created this song based on the traditional Three Frogs children song.  

Click here to get the google slides and note this will force a copy! 


















Enjoy!  



Monday, January 22, 2024

Lead Through That Sugar and Tea

 This is a favorite dance and I love using it to introduce syncopation!  There are (at least) 2 versions although I think Version 2 is probably more historically accurate.  The song and dance is a play party.  Here is more information about this song and more here from the University of Arkansas with a field recording from 1953.  The speech at the beginning of Version 1 is something I created with my students. 

Click here for the Google Slides. 











Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Bounce High, Bounce Low

 This is one of those games that is played many ways and has a myriad of concepts to focus on.  I love using this in Kindergarten as a beat game, then later in the year as a rhythm game, and then spiraling it up into first grade as an introduction into La.  

For the full slides, please click here and note this will force a copy. 





















Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Pop It Music Game

 On Wednesdays we have a special schedule and with my first and second graders I have been doing a lot of centers and rotations.  As explained by a classroom teacher, a Center is an activity or station where students choose to go and choose how long they spend at that place.  A Rotation is where all students experience the same things for the same amount of time and rotate through the various activities. 

Once introduced, these games and activities are perfect to leave for a sub! 

If you are on a mobile device, scroll all the way to the bottom and click, "View Web Version" and on the right you will see all the posts that are tagged with "Centers" and "Rotations".

One of my new favorites is this pop it game with dice.

Someone posted this on instagram last year and it has become a new favorite.  Use foam dice from Dollar Tree and write your rhythms on all sides.  For me, this is a Leveled Game with Level One using quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rest.  Level Two adds half note and Level Three adds sixteenth notes and eighth, sixteenth note combinations.  

On the game itself, sit in front of the TV one night and use a Sharpie to draw quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests on each "pop".  I keep the dice, games, and directions in a 2-gallon ziploc bag with my other rotations and centers.  



Here are the direction cards:



















Enjoy!