On Thanksgiving

This is one that I got from Cindy McCaskill during my undergrad practicum/student teaching with her.  I'm pretty sure that it's from a textbook. . . not true Kodály, I know.  And it's changing the words of a folk song.  *Gasp. . . lol!  We Kodály teachers can take ourselves too seriously sometimes, huh?

It's based on "Are You Sleeping" or "Brother John" (a.k.a. Frére Jacques).  When my kiddos are in second grade we use "Brother John" to teach half note:


But in my Kodály training Jill Trinka argued that it should actually be notated in diminution of this notation.  If you've studied with Jill you know that she emphasizes that you notate music the way you hear it, the way you feel it and the way you sing it.  I really agree with her. . . so I use this as a way to briefly talk about diminution with my 3rd graders. . . it's pretty challenging but it's good for differentiation and challenging your TAG kiddos:



So, that was my long, drawn out way of explaining why I use the following notation.  It's great at this time of year with 3rd grade because it reinforces/practices reading rhythms with tika-tika and also is a great prep song for so,.  Here are the words:


Of course, this works really well as a round and having your students create their own movements for each phrase helps them sing it as a round with ease (in addition to helping them remember the words of the song).

Here's an Orff part that I wrote and use with my kiddos.  I'm not an Orff teacher, I would love to take level I soon (but I have a 2 year old and a 5 year old, so it's not happening anytime soon), so it's pretty simple.  With 3rd grade we're working on harmony and the alto xylophone emphasizes the use of an ostinato that we've been using a lot in class:

I have a new Turkey solfége game that I'll be posting about tomorrow. . . I'm trying it out tomorrow with my kiddos, wish me luck!

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