Big Bunch of Roses

Now, this is a song that I had sitting in my pile of "too be looked at in greater detail" pile for years.  I couldn't figure out how to "own" the song and in turn "sell it" to my students.  Then last year at Leigh Anne Garner's ROCKE workshop I learned some activities to do with it.

Here's the song:

Here's an easy Orff accompaniment that I made up (again, I have no Orff training, so all my "stuff" is quite simple):

Now, Leigh Anne presented a passing song using plush roses.  Last year I found these online:

They were quite the buy and they can in five different colors (red, pink, orange, blue, purple), which worked out nicely for the game that Leigh Anne taught us.   (I'm sad to report that the roses I found are no longer available.  But with Valentine's day around the corner keep your eye out when your shopping, you never know what you might find!)

Here are my kiddos singing and playing the passing game.  Sitting in a circle, every student had a rose and passed the roses to the right on the beat of the song (pass, pick-up, pass, pick-up, etc.)  When Leigh Anne taught is she didn't have a rose for everybody, so that's another way to play it.  When you didn't have a rose you kept the pattern going with your arms and when the rose was in front of you you passed it.

Here's a PowerPoint that I made for the song.  There's a lyric slide:

Melodic preparation slides:

Melodic prep on the staff:

Melodic practice slides (sans rhythm):

Melodic practice on the staff:

 Rhythm preparation slides, students must figure out where to add ties:

Rhythmic preparation slides, with ties:

Rhythm practice slides:

Rhythmic and melodic practice slides, with stick notation:

Rhythmic and melodic practice slides, staff notation:

Absolute pitch reading practice slides:

And a song sorting game:

Going back to the plush rose passing game, I use the colors of the roses to group my students and I have the above cards printed on matching paper.  That is, I have red cards, pink cards, orange cards, blue cards & purple cards.  Everyone with like colored roses work together to find the cards that they need to put the song in order.  If you notice, the first 4 cards match the song, the second 4 do not match the song.  This is to "up the ante" and make the game harder.  So to simplify the game, you could print out only the top four cards.  

This PowerPoint is available at my Teachers pay Teachers store for $1.00.  Please follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers, beginning in February I will be starting a monthly freebie, for followers only.

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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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Pumpkin Pumpkin

Phew, what a busy month September was! Looking back, I barely posted this month!!

I have to admit, I'm glad that October is here. I LOVE fall. . . I love the change of the season and I'll be honest, I love the fun music repertoire that Halloween brings.

One of my favorites is Pumpkin, Pumpkin.  I use this in 3rd grade.  My students learn tika-tika in the early fall and they already are able to read the do-pentatonic scale so it's completely accessible for the students to read the rhythm, solfa and absolute pitch names.

Here's the song:

I teach a dance mixer that I thought was totally original. . . and right after I "created" it I went to a ROCKE workshop with Sanna Longden and she did almost and identical dance with it!

Formation:  Single circle, facing partners.

Action:

1. On "pumpkin pumpkin round and fat" the pattern is pat-clap-pat-clap-pat-clap-partner (both hands patting partners' hands)
2. "Turn into a jack-o-lantern"- with hands touching paterner's hands, trade places with partner
3. "Just like that"- pat parterner's hands three times then jump and turn 180 degrees to face a new partner
4. The dance continues until you return to your first partner.

Here's an extention activity with Pumpkin Pumpkin as a mystery song:

Here's to a Happy October!! :)

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