Slug Bug!!

Happy Almost-New Year!  Yesterday I met my friend Tanya LeJeune for lunch but before we ate we went to the local teacher store (sad, I know, considering we're on vacation.)  At any rate, I saw some cute "slug bug" die cuts and that sparked this idea.  I'll be using the rhythm version in a few weeks after my 3rd graders learned ti-tika and I'll use the melodic version of the game with 2nd grade when we learn re later this year.  

Here's the song that's the basis of the game:

The kids love to sing this song, and the actions are quite fun!

Here's the "Slug Bug Melody" game that I'll use with my 2nd graders:

•These cars can be used to practice re in phrases that are extracted from folk songs.

All Around the Buttercup, Blue, Closet Key, Button You Must Wander (x2), Cocky Robin, Do, do Pity My Case, Firefly (x2), Frosty Weather, Grinding Corn, Hot Cross Buns, Ida Red(Final Phrase), Knockthe Cymbals, Let Us Chase the Squirrel (x2), Old Aunt Dinah (x3), Rocky Mountain, Sammy Sacket (x2)

•Slug BugGame:

–Divide the class into “teams” (2-4 teams would be best).  Each team is given a “hand” swatter (Go in with a colleague and buy some: http://www.amazon.com/Worldwide-Hand-Shaped-Fly-Swatters-Pack/dp/B0057TTB5Y )

–Taking turns with the flyswatter, a “representative” from each team comes up to the floor where all the “Slug Bugs” are scattered.  (You can also put magnets on them and put them on a magnetic board. This makes them visible for all  students, but tougher for the swatters to do this safely).  The teacher will sing a pattern, the first person to swat the correct “Slug Bug” earns that car for his/her team.  A new “representative” for each team comes up and another round is played.  Play continues until all the “Slug Bugs” have been slapped. The team with the most slug bugs at the end is the winner.

–Levels of difficulty

•Easiest: the teacher sings the phrase using solfége syllables.

•Medium: the teacher sings the phrase on “loo”.

•Harder: the teacher plays the pattern on an instrument.

Here are the cards:
First, I made "smaller" cards:

But when I printed them out I thought it would probably work better with larger cards, so I re-did them with two cars on a page:

The Slug Bug Rhythm game that I'll be using with my 3rd graders is identical, but it's focused on ti-tika:

•These cars can be used to practice ti-tika.

•Slug Bug Game:

–Divide the class into “teams” (2-4 teams would be best).  Each team is given a “hand” swatter (Go in with a colleague and buy some: http://www.amazon.com/Worldwide-Hand-Shaped-Fly-Swatters-Pack/dp/B0057TTB5Y )

–Taking turns with the flyswatter, a “representative” from each team comes up to the floor where all the “Slug Bugs” are scattered.  (You can also put magnets on them and put them on a magnetic board. This makes them visible for all  students, but tougher for the swatters to do this safely).  The teacher will perform a pattern, the first person to swat the correct “Slug Bug” earns that car for his/her team.  A new “representative” for each team comes up and another round is played.  Play continues until all the “Slug Bugs” have been slapped. The team with the most slug bugs at the end is the winner.

–Levels of difficulty

•Easiest: the teacher claps and says the rhythm pattern.

•Medium: the teacher claps the pattern.

•Harder: the teacher plays the pattern on an instrument.

And then I made a "Slug Bug Mix-Up" Game.  This can be used with high do, as that is the most difficult melodic element in "The Car Song."

•Using either the stick or staff notation, give each student four cards (containing each of the first 4 phrases of the song).  The students must put the “Slug Bugs” in order to create the notation for the “A” section of the song

•Stick to Staff: the students must match the cards with stick notation to the correct cards with staff notation.

These files can be found at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.  Happy Slug Bugging!

Slug Bug Melody

Slug Bug Rhythm

Slug Bug Melody and Rhythm Games (with smaller car-cards) and Mix-Up Game

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King of the Mountain

"King of the Mountain" is a very fun rhythm practice game that I learned from Lamar Robertson when I very first started teaching.  Of course, I started trying to implement it without having all my Kodály levels and I have since refined the way I teach it.  

Here are the basic concepts of the game:

Formation: 

students are seated in a circle, with “King of the Mountain” cards in front of them (folded in half and propped up like a tent- this enables the student to see their card and for players on the other side of the circle to see the card as well)

Action:

1. One student is designated the King/Queen.  The person to the King’s right is the next highest player on the mountain (one position lower on the mountain than the king); the person to that person’s right is the one position lower etc., all the way around the circle with the player to the king’s left being the lowest player on the mountain. In other words, as you progress around the circle from the king’s right, you go “down” the mountain (you get lower and lower on the mountain).  The goal of the game is to work your way up to the top of the mountain and be in the king’s position.
2. The king starts the play by reading his/her card, with a steady beat.  Without missing a beat the king must then read another player’s card.  The player who’s card is read must then read their card and then another player’s card and so on until someone makes an error.   The rhythms on the card must be read with a steady beat and without missing a beat.
3. If a player makes a mistake (for example, misses a beat, reads a rhythm wrong, says their card out of turn) that player goes to the bottom position on the mountain (the seat to the king’s right) and all players “lower on the mountain” that that player advance up a position.  ** THE CARDS ARE FIXED IN THEIR POSITION- THE CARDS DO NOT MOVE, only the players change position.  The king starts the play again, once everyone has changed position.
4. The end of the game is determined by the length of time the teachers wants to designate to the game.

To make this more difficult:

1. Have students must clap their rhythms, in addition to saying them.  This is much harder then just saying their rhythms.
2. To “Up the Ante”, have students clap only their rhythms.  
3. Instead of using standing cards, cut the cards in half and have the students read the cards from the floor.  This challenges students to read cards on the other side of the room that are upside down and backwards- this is a higher level thinking task.  But, this is also visually harder with large groups

As I mentioned before, when I first started I had no clue as to what I was doing.  I had every rhythm imaginable in the game and it was a mess.  I redid them a few years ago and really used them to focus on practicing a specific rhythmic element.  Those cards have been starting to  look pretty bad so I recently made new versions of the games, here are some examples of four Syn-co-pa cards:

I'm going to print them out on card stock and then they will be folded along the dotted line so that they stand up.  

You can find the following sets on my Teachers Pay Teachers page:

1. Tika-Tika
2. Ti-tika 
3. Tika-ti
4. Syn-co-pa
5. Tom-ti
6. Ti-tom
7. Tim-ka
8. Ti-kam

Additionally,  I have made some glynniss' games that I will be posting at my TpT store and will be writing a blog post about tomorrow.  If you follow Aileen Miracle's AMAZING blog, you'll see that she posted about this yesterday and she has some "I have/Who has" files at her store (and she has a freebie!).  Make sure you follow her, both on her blog and at her TpT store, she has some great ideas!!! 

Have a great weekend everyone!

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Nuttin' for Christmas

This is one of my all-time favorite songs and the kids love it!  Back when Rosie O'Donnell had her talk show (The Rosie Show.  This will date me but it was back in 2000, you know, at the turn of the century, lol!) she did a couple Christmas albums where she sang with celebrities.  She sang this one with Smash Mouth, it's totally fun. . . check it out on iTunes.  

At any rate, here's the song.

My 4th graders are working on syn-co-pa and  I thought this would be a fun practice song for them. . . and I came up with a "borrowed" game for it (below).

Here are a few preview slides of the PowerPoint that I made for it.  I did the whole song but only uploaded the chorus and first verse here:

Here is the syncopa prep slide, similar the slides I made for the "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" PowerPoint.  I did NOT do rhythm or solfa slides for the verses- it was just too time consuming to match the rhythms to the text and it's not what I'm using the PowerPoint for so I'm extracting just the chorus for syncopa (and it's December and I don't have the time. . . I bet you feel the same way!):

Here's the syncopa practice slide:

And here's the solfa slide for the chorus:

I did make 22 practice slides that I can also print out to make flashcards.  Here are a few:

So, on to my "borrowed" game.  I was trying to think of a fun way to sing the song but also incorporate individual rhythm reading.  So, here's what I came up with, the game is similar to "Freddy Oaka" and "Son Macaron".

Game:
Formation: seated circle
Action:

1. players sit with their left hand, palm side up, on their left leg.  Their right hand is placed in their neighbor's left hand (the person to their right).  
2. While singing the song, the beat is passed by assigning a leader to start and then individually crossing over the body to tap the right hand of the neighbor sitting to the player's left.  (just like "Aquaqua" or "Down By the Banks").  The beat is passed until the chorus of the song is finished.  
3. The student who the beat lands on "bad" then goes to the middle of the circle while the verse is sung.
4. While the rest of the class is singing the verse, the "out" student draws a card from the "coal bag" (which I found at Safeway and Walmart).  They have the entire verse to read over their card and be ready to read it when the class is done singing the song.  If they say/clap the card correctly they may rejoin the circle.  If the don't they stay in for one more turn to try it again while the class sings the chorus.  They can then re-try the card and rejoin the circle, with the new "out" student going in the circle and play is repeated.

Here's the coal bag:

And here are the coal cards, I have mine printed with the coal-stocking image on one side and the rhythm on the other.  You do not need to print the image, you could have just the rhythm printed on the card.  (All the rhythm cards are from the syncopa flashcards):

I did make a "Coal-Solfa Card".  My husband doesn't think it looks like coal. . .which means my 4th graders probably won't either, but ce la vie, lol!  These can be cut in have and used to sing the chorus solfa, solfége echos, question-answer games, etc.:

I did make a couple ti-tika slides to use with my 3rd graders. ..  maybe, there's so much to do before Winter break.  I completely extracted the response from the call-response form of the verse.

Here's the prep slide:

Here's the practice slide:

And I also made ti-tika practice cards to use if I do this with 3rd grade:

Oh, and Safeway & Walmart had a cute Grinch bag too!

This file can be found at my Teacher's pay Teachers Page.  It is $2, but includes the entire PowerPoint as well as the 22 syncopa flashcards.

Have a great rest of your weekend!

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Up On The Housetop

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone already!  I don't know about your schedules but our district has 3.5 weeks until Winter break.  With three school choir performances between then and now I already have my tree up, the lights hung outside, most of my kids' presents purchased and have been listening to Christmas songs for the past few days.  Sad, I know!  

Well, since I have caught the holiday spirit and because one of the teachers in my district recently asked me if I could recommend any Christmas songs that use ti-tika and tika-ti I thought I'd share a PowerPoint and solfa-mix-up game that I created over break.  I did find a few Christmas songs that use ti-tika and tika-ti, including "Up On The Housetop."  Now, the notated version I have of this song is written in augmentation of the way I have it notated.  This goes back to my Kodály levels with Jill Trinka; she wanted us to notated songs the way we sing it and I think this lends itself to the way I have it notated below:

Of course there are two more verses.  These two are included in the PowerPoint slide below:

My third graders are prepping ti-tika, and we will present it in the next week.  We will start by reading this slide that uses a tie in the sixteenth notes.  We talk about the critical attributes of this rhythmic element: it is three sounds on one beat, the sounds are uneven and the sound organization is long-short-short.

If you have older beginners and are choosing to present ti-tika and tika-ti at the same time you could use this slide as well (although, my choice is to prepare and present each of these rhythmic elements individually):

Once ti-tika is presented, my 3rd graders will read the slide with this notation:

Here's the tika-ti prep slide, if you're prepping tika-ti:

And you could always have your 4th and 5th graders read the following rhythmic notation for practice:

The verse of this song is excellent do-pentatonic practice for 3rd-5th graders:

If you have gotten to fa with your 4th graders they could also read the chorus on solfége:

Here are some flashcards with rhythmic and melodic patterns from the song:

One of my professional goals this year is to incorporate more solo/small group work.  I'm planning on using this as an assessment.  On one side of the card I will print the Santa's that are stuck in the chimney and on the other side will be the rhythm/solfa.  For 3rd grade, each student will receive 4 cards (the fronts with the Santas and the back with the patterns from the verse) and for 4-5 grades, each student will receive a total of 8 cards (the fronts with the Santas and the backs with the patterns from both the verse and the chorus).  The object is to put the cards in the order of the song.

If you would like a copy of this file, I have uploaded it to Teachers pay Teachers and you can access it by clicking here.

I hope you all had a GREAT Thanksgiving!!

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