Songs for Solo Singing

Truth time: I'm a flute player.  I was raises an instrumentalist and have suffered with a poor ear all my life.  Unfortunately, I think wind instruments, if not taught the correct way, lend themselves to poor ear development.  Or at least that's my case.  With brass instruments they have to listen to where they play in the harmonic overtone series.  Trombone players especially develop a good ear.  The same with string players, they have to rely on their ear to play the correct notes, let alone with good intonation.  With wind instruments, you have a set of keys to put down and you play.  You either (for the flute) get one octave or the other.  And I know that a major part of my sad story is that I was never taught early on about good intonation and my aural skills were never challenged.  It wasn't until Kodály levels musicianship class that I finally "saw the light."  THANK YOU VICKI LOEBELL!!! :)

Long story short, I try to challenge my students to sing by themselves in class. . . a lot.  Some of the "easiest" ways they sing on their own is through echo songs.  The echos are short, they give the students a real quick turn (which your really shy students warm up to doing right away) and you can give quick immediate feedback.  Call-response songs are also great for this reason.  John Feierabend has two WHOLE books devoted to these types of songs.  

What I also like to do is incorporate solo singing into singing games and in a non-threatening environment.  So, I compiled all my songs that do this into a little collection:

 Here are a few of my favorites.  Jigalo is one that I remember from early on and that I have seen presented at a couple workshops since I began teaching (Melissa Roth and Sue Bowcock, to be specific.  Both of whom presented different variants of this song.)  This is a really fun "street" game, sometimes cheer leaders perform it (which is a hit with my cheerleader heavy 5th grade girls.)

I created a PowerPoint for this one, but this is a fun way to get your older beginners or hesitant singers to participate (as they aren't really singing.)  Basically, one student sits with their back to the class while the song is sung.  One student is the "old man" or "spook," who whispers all the answers.  At the end, the student who is sitting with their back to the class tries to guess who the spook is.

This is an African-American favorite of mine.  It's played like "cut the cake" and the leader performs the call as a solo:

This one I learned from Susan Brumfield during my level I Kodály class at Portland State and the older classes eat it up.  There's solo singing but also pitch memory as they start out speaking their part and transition into singing.

You can find this at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I have been posting a lot of files in a zip file.  If you ever have any trouble at all with a file, please email me.  I'll be more than happy to email you the file and that usually alleviates any problems you might have opening the zip file.

Happy Monday everyone!! :)

0

Let's Hide The Pumpkin

This is a fun singing game to do with your kinders.  I learned it from Lamar Robertson and it can be found in the book that he co-authored with Ann Eisen, An American Methodology.  This is a must have for your teaching library and worth EVERY penny!!  If you don't have it put it on your Christmas/Hanukkah/Birthday list!!

Here's the song:

Action:  One student is blindfolded and one student is given a small pumpkin.  The class sings the first line all together.  The blindfolded student sings the second line, "Who has the pumpkin, who has the pumpkin?" and the student with the pumpkin answers, "I have the pumpkin, I have the pumpkin."  The student in the center then has three guesses as to who has the pumpkin.

In the past I used a real pumpkin, you know those itty-bitty pumpkins that they have for decoration.  But Target was THE place to get Halloween manipulatives this year (che!  They had these pumpkin erasers that I used for the game this year:

Now, I mentioned Target was THE place for Halloween manipulatives this year: they also has skeleton, black cat and ghost erasers.  My son is one of my kindergartners and it's funny how much I learn from him.  Well, one morning this week he found the skeletons and started singing "Let's hide the skeleton, let's hide the skeleton."  So, this week we changed it up and switched the words.  You could EASILY adapt this to work with any "theme or subject" you are doing.  Here are a few ideas:

November: use a small turkey

December: a jingle bell

January: a snow flake

February: a Valentine

March: a shamrock

April: a rain drop

May: a flower

The possibilities are endless!!

Back to the pumpkin erasers, what a great find!  We also used them in third grade as a fun, different way to write rhythms that include tika-tika.  

A "different" way to write the same rhythm:

0

Witch Witch

I'm sad to report that this is another one of those songs that "I just don't remember where I learned it."  I know a lot of people sing "Old Mother Witch".  That one goes like this: 

But the version I know (and prefer) goes like this:

The main reason I prefer this version is that it includes solo singing.  It's a great way for me to assess their solo singing in a non-threatening way (anytime you use a game to assess singing, the kids feel safer and to be honest, most of the time they don't even realized they're being assessed!)

Here's the game:
Formation:  circle (standing or seated. . . side note: I've found that standing circles tend to "migrate" so I usually do this sitting) with one character, the "witch," standing in the middle
Action:  The "witch" in the middle acts out "falling in a ditch" and picking up a penny.  I used to use a real penny but then I printed out big penny via clip art that I found online.  The witch then sings four times "Are you my children?"  The class, the first three times, responds "Yes, we're your children" and the third time respond, "no you crazy old witch."

Now, I'll be the first to tell you that if you do this with your kiddos and you have your classroom door open you sometimes get some puzzled looks.  Articulation is key my friends, lol! ;)

My second graders had music every 4th day last year (and last year our school opened so last year was my first year with them).  This year, they again have music on a 4-day rotation.  Because of this we just got to so-mi a few weeks ago.  When I present so-mi we immediately put it on the five line staff.  (We use our hand staves, we practice numbering the lines and spaces starting at the bottom, and we have a heart-to-heart talk about note heads.  An idea that I got from Kurt Cereske is to have them place one hand horizontal on the top of their head and one hand horizontal on the bottom of their chin, thus making their own head a "space note".  Then, putting their hands, horizontally, on each side of their head by their ears makes their own head a "line note")

When my husband and I started dating some 11+ years ago my mother-in-law gave me these really cute little witch heads made out of wood.  I don't know where she got them and they have sat in my closet for years (remember I'm a manipulative freak and I get things and figure out how to use them later).  That was until this year when I decided to put magnets on the back of them.  See how the witchs' heads fit perfectly in the spaces of my staff!! :

Here's one of my cuties adding a note to the first phrase.  Notice how he's carefully looking it over. . .he knows some thing's not correct:

And he found it and fixed it:

Here's my next cutie adding the final note:

And there you have it, a little "Witch Witch" to start your weekend.  Remember, watch that articulation as people pass your door, lol!

1

My Good Old Man

Okay, I'm going to shock you all and NOT post a "Halloween" song!!    This song does, however, have a "spooky" element to it and I love to teach it to my 4th graders in the fall as early preparation for ti-tom. 

Here's the song:

The students LOVE this song.  When I first introduce it I sing it and I tell them to whisper the responses, which I have written out on flash cards.  Eventually this turns into a game:

Formation:  Students are seated, either in assigned seats on the risers or in a circle, with one student not able to see the rest of the class.
Action: As the class sings the song, one student is assigned to be the "old man" or "old woman."  This assigned student is the only person to whisper the spoken parts.  The person, who is unable to see the rest of the class, at the end of the song tries to guess who the "old man/woman" was.

While teaching this song, I use a PowerPoint with this song.  The first few slides were created by a colleague of mine in my district, but the "pedagogical" pages I created.  You should be able to access the whole PowerPoint here.

Here is the song text slides of the PowerPoint:

Here's where we get into the "meat and potatoes" of the song.  First we keep a steady beat while singing the song.  Second, we tap the rhythm of the song.  Third, we tap the rhythm while reading this slide and seeing how the rhythm/text align to the beats of the song.

Once we get into the later preparation of ti-tom we look for where we need to add ties to make the rhythm match the song.    For this particular song it's on the first rhythm slide:

 After we have figured out as a class where the tie belongs we read the song with the tie.  If we are in preparation of ti-tom, this is where the use of the slide show ends for that day.

 If we are practicing ti-tom we will continue on with the PowerPoint and read these next few slides:

All the melodic elements will be practiced, as they are all known so once ti-tom has been presented we continue on with these slides:

Mystery songs are also fun to use with the students.  I put the music only up of songs that they have previously read.  When we first use mystery songs we will derive them as a class.  First we clap the rhythm.  Second, we sing the solfa without particular attention to rhythm.  Thirdly we put the two together.  From there the class derives the song together.  As they have more experience with this process we turn this into an inner-hearing exercise where they go through this process more independently.  They do this work first in small groups multiple times.  After much practice, they move on to trying to figure out how to figure out the mystery song independently.

Here's a three part arrangement of "My Good Old Man."  I'm so sorry to report that I don't know where I got this!  But this can work nicely on a concert.

4

Pumpkin Patch

Here's a fun seasonal game that I learned from Dave Noyes while taking Kodály levels at Portland State University.  This is one that I hang onto until 3rd grade as it works well for tika-tika practice.

Formation: scattered

Action:  All children except one are scattered, curled up into little balls on the floor, representing the pumpkins in a pumpkin patch.  One child wanders through the pumpkin patch, singing as they go.  By the beginning of the second line, the child selects and stands by a pumpkin.  On the words "just like that", the child taps lightly three times on the back of their chosen pumpkin, which causes the pumpkin to turn into a "jack-o-lantern" by standing up and making a face.  That child then joins the search and the game begins again.  Therefore, each time the song us sung, the number of children who are up and "picking pumpkins" doubles.  This continues until there are no pumpkins left in the patch.

An alternate way to play is that when the child picks a pumpkin, the new child becomes the picker and the old child joins the pumpkin patch as a pumpkin.  

You can also add solo singing by having the pumpkin picker sing "here is one, nice and fat" by him or herself.

7

Doggie Doggie Decoding

I wrote a post in August about some fun erasers that I found at Walmart this year.  You can read that post by clicking here.  I found frogs, cupcakes, butterflies but my favorite are the dogs.  I knew that I wanted to use them with some of my dog songs and one of those is Doggie Doggie.

In case you're not familiar with Doggie Doggie, it's a solo-singing/vocal timbre game.  One student is seated in the middle of the circle (or in front of your rows, if your kiddos are seated in rows).  The student in the middle is the "dog" and has their eyes closed during the song.  One of the other students is chose to have the bone.  The class sings, "Doggie, doggie where's your bone?" and the "dog" replies, "someone stole it from my home."  The class then sings, "Who stole your bone?" and the student with the bone answers, "I stole the bone."  The "dog" then has three guesses as to who has the bone.  

Here are my dog erasers with the first phrase of the song written on the staff:

I used this with second grade last week to review so & mi.  We didn't write it on the staff but wrote it spatially on the floor.  Each student was given a baggie that had 10 dogs in it (we went through the whole "spiel" that you start with 10 dogs and when you return your bag there should be ten dogs.  They were really cute about making sure there were no "stray dogs" on left on the floor when we were done.

First, they notated the first phrase of the song:

Then we did doggie decoding.  I sang a phrase using so & mi patterns from songs that they know but I sang them on "woof".  After I sang them on "woof" they sang the phrase back to me on solfa and then wrote out the pattern they heard.  Below is "woof woof woof woof woof" on the pitches so mi so so mi:

 They had a great time with this and it was fun variation to melodic decoding.

2