Music Teacher Coffee Talk #10: Spring Songs and Activities

Hello Music People!

Music Teacher Coffee Talk #10 is all about our favorite Spring songs, games, and activities in the music room.

Kindergarten

Vocal Exploration using the book Up, Down, and Around by Katherine Ayres and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott.  ISBN:  0763640174

Students follow the path of the vegetables on an “oo” vowel.  Could also play as glissandi on barred instruments.

Game directions:  Students stand in a circle.  One student walks around the circle with an umbrella.  At the end of the second phrase, the student stops behind someone and sings “Little (name) wants to play” using the name of the child in front of them.  The class echoes as the students trade places.

Suggested activities to practice so and mi:

•Write so/mi patterns using umbrella icons on a 2, 3, or 5 line staff.

•Students match umbrella cards, one with the stick notation of the song and

the other with notes on the staff.

•Students create a 4-beat so/mi pattern on individual staff boards and sing their

pattern in between repetitions of the song.

1st Grade 

2nd Grade 

Improvisation activity:

Students sit or stand in a circle.  All sing the song and one student improvises

a new fruit or vegetable at the end of the phrase. Play as a cumulative game,

repeating all the improvised words on each repetition.

3rd Grade/4th Grade

Game:

Solo singing. Children sing and improvise chores.

Children form a standing circle and bounce/catch a ball around the circle on the beat

The child holding the ball on the last syllable of "gar-den" holds the ball while singing the

improvised solo.

5th Grade

Stick passing game:

Students sit , cross legged, in a circle. Each student has two slender sticks or pencils in front of them

(Chopsticks work well.)

Students pass to the right with the following pattern:

Beat 1: Pick up 

Beat 2: click sticks together 

Beat 3: pass (place sticks in front of person on the right)

Beat 4: pick up

Beat 5: pass (repeat pattern 4 times for entire song.)

(It can be helpful for the students to say, "Pick up, click, pass, pick up, pass" as they are initially learning the pattern.)


Coda section recommendations:

Rainy Cafe

I Knew You Were Treble

All About That Bass (Clef)