I'm a Little Brass Lock

This is a solo singing gem that I learned during my student teaching.  It's very cute and it gets some good giggles!  Here's the song:

Simple right?  Well, for this short little four measure song there is actually a lot of "meat."  

First, there are additional verses:

1. I'm a little silver lock, I'm a little silver key.
2. I'm a little gold lock, I'm a little gold key.
3. I'm a little mon lock, I'm a little mon-key.
4. Etc. (see below for more ideas)

Here's the general idea of the game:

The teacher sings the first phrase of the song, and the students sings the second phrase, which is an echo of the teacher’s part except that they replace the word “lock” with the word “key”.

Here are some steps to "milk" more out of it and really get a lot of bang for your buck:

1.  The teacher gives out “key cards.”  Only the student with the appropriate key responds to the teacher’s sung first phrase.  There might or might not be enough key cards for everyone.  So, some kiddos get a turn one day and others get a turn the next day.  You could do everyone in the same day, depending on how you structure your classes.

2. The teacher passes out the key and the lock cards (giving the lock key to your "ringers," you know, the kiddos that you KNOW will match pitch really well and serve as good vocal models for others in class.)  The students with the lock cards stand in a row so they know which order they will sing in.  These students sing the first phrase independently and the student with the matching key card sings the second phrase.

3.  Two to three sets of cards are passed out, and it’s played as a “who has the key” game.  The students with “lock” cards must close their eyes.  Next, the students with lock cards sing their card when the teacher touches their shoulder.  Then the student with the matching key card sings his/her answer.  After all cards have been performed, all students hide hands behind their backs, and the students must guess who had their key.

Additionally, this is a GREAT song to practice la.  Now, I've said this before, I structure my PowerPoints the same in that I include the preparation and practice slides for all the melodic and rhythmic elements that are age-appropriate and teachable with the song. This song I use for practicing la but I included the prep and presentation slides in case some of you might use it. :)

Here' the PowerPoint, it goes through multiple verses:

There are beat and rhythm cards:

There are melodic prep slides (written in G-do and F-do):

Melodic preparation slide that focuses on the critical attributes of la:

The presentation slide:

And practice slides:

Here are the cards that can be used for the game:

You can find this file at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Additionally, I'm working on a Songs for Solo Singing Packet that will include more songs and activities like this.  I hope you've had a good Tuesday!

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Bell Horses

This is a song for which I have heard a lot of different variations, especially with the ending phrase.  Here's the way I know it:

I love this song and use if for various concepts.  With my kinders I use it for steady beat.  I have a beat chart that has horses and they practice beat tracking, we play a couple different games with it (see below) and we use my cute little rocking horses with it.  Here are my rocking horses:

 My Granny made these for me my first year of teaching and I use them every year.  They practice the steady beat while "rocking" the horses back and forth.  Students that don't use a rocking horse use their fists as "mock" horses to rock with the beat.  The kids LOVE using these.  I also use them for beat tracking. I'll have all four horses lined up and they pet the horses on the beats of the song.  For instance, using the horses below, they would pet the purple horse on beat one, then the orange horse on beat two, the red horse on beat three and the yellow horse on beat four.  Then they would start the beat pattern again, starting back on the purple horse.

With my first grades, I use it for la and of course we use it as an opportunity to review the known rhythms of ta, ti-ti and rest and the melodic known elements of  so-mi.  Here's the PowerPoint (I actually sing three verses of the song when we play the game):

 I know a lot of people use this ending, so I included this in my file that's posted on Teachers Pay Teachers:

There's a beat chart:

 (including the alternate ending phrase):

 Rhythm prep:

 Ta & ti-ti review/rest prep:

 With rest notated:

 With note-heads:

 Melodic preparation for la:

 I noticed that I've been favoring the key of F lately so I'm going to start trying to post everything written in G-do and F-do.  I also need to do a few in C-do, I know! :)

La presentation:

And immediate practice of la:

 And here are the games that I know, click on the image to read them in a bigger font:

You can download this file from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

I hope you all are having a GREAT week!!!

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