Turkey Trot Blues

Happy Thanksgiving week everyone!  I know a lot of you are still in school so here's a fun song to use with your 1st graders . .. .  and 2nd graders!  I found it in Holidays and Special Days by Grace Nash and Janice Rapley during my college practicum classes and have used it every year.  The kids eat it up!

Here's the song:

Now, this is NOT a folk song.  But over the years I've accidentally changed the melody.  Here's the way I sing it with my kiddos (and we sing it with swung eighth notes):

I use this to aurally identify/reinforce quarter rests with my 1st graders.  Other than that, we use it for expression and FUN.  Here's the game:

Formation: circle, with one student (the "farmer") on the outside of the circle and 2-3 turkeys in the middle.

Action: as the song is sung, the farmer walks around the outside of the circle while the turkeys trot around the middle of the circle.  At the end of the song the farmer chases the turkeys.

Depending on where your students are in your movement sequence, you can have the students in the circle walk the beat while the song is sung with their arms acting as a fence. At the end, the students can choose to make their joined arms gates or leave their section of the fence closed.  

You can also add instruments.  In Holidays and Special Days there are more elaborate Orff parts.  I simplified it so my 1st and 2nd graders can play is successfully and independently.  

Here are a couple of my 1st graders playing it this year.  It's a lot of fun and it's great to get some of those pre-holiday wiggles out:

Liza Meyer's wrote a post that included this song a couple years ago.  She notates it as la,-do at the beginning but my source uses so-mi.  You can read her post by clicking here.  This post also has a fun Thanksgiving song to the tune of Zum Gali Gali- it's a must do!  Your older kiddos with LOVE it!

Have a GREAT week everyone!