Somebody Loves Me

I'm sad to admit I can't remember my source for this song. . . although my mom does it with her kids, so does that count, lol?!!!  Here it is:

It's a great seasonal song to use for high do and syn-co-pa.  Of course I have preparation slides as well as practice slides for this song.  I bet you're starting to figure out the pattern of my PowerPoints, but we'll walk through it ;)

Here's the title page:

The lyric slides:

Beat slide:

The iconic rhythm slide (for preparation).  Remember, with a PowerPoint you can arrange the slides to meet your needs and concepts that you're working on .  I won't be using this slide, but if you haven't done syncopa this is a good visual representation of the sound:

The rhythm practice slide:

 Then we get into the melody slides.  First are the words spatially arranged for the whole song.  This is a a sample:

Then it goes through the whole song again, but this time on the staff:

Then we get into the "meat" of the preparation slides, drawing attention to the new note and focusing in on its critical attributes:

The solfége goes through the entire song, sans staff:

And then with the staff:

Then there are the presentation and practice slides:

The are exactly the same as the preparation slides, but now high do is labeled:

Then it's written with the "real" notes:

 And then there's the absolute pitch practice slides:

Finally, a GAME!!  Yeah!  There is a direction slide (the directions are written out below):

And here's a sample of the cards that go with the game.  There are 10 slides, for a total of 40 different rhythm cards:

Here's the 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 song is finished.

3.    The person who the beat lands on on the word “you” is then out (you can play that they can try to pull their hand away before being tapped and if they are successful, the person trying to tap them is out).

4.    The person who is out then picks a card.  If they successfully read it they can get back in the game.  If not, play continues and that person helps the next “out-ed” person read their card.  If they read it correctly, they get back in the game.  Etc.

Now, with the cards you can put them in cute little bags like this that I found in the dollar bin at Target:

Of course I found these more expensive ones first at Walmart:

Or for ultimate cuteness, you can use these mailboxes.  These were in the dollar section at Target!!  And yep, me being the hoarder I am, bought 15 of them. I'm planning on using them with some other Valentine's Day activities, but that's a post for another day! :)

The slide show above can be found at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Speaking of which, there's a big sale starting tomorrow and runs through Sunday.  Basically, a lot of the teachers on TpT are selling their products at a reduced rate.  Everything in my store will be on sale for 28% off the normal price!!

Happy Friday everyone!!

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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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