One, Two, Three O'Leary

Yes, I have not fallen off the face of the earth, lol!  I hope you all had a wonderful December!  Things are back in full swing in Erie but I wanted to share a song that my 5th graders started before winter break.  They're reading songs with ti now.  I'm so excited!  I've not gotten this far in the Kodály sequence before!  The school I was at before was a "bilingual" school (I've blogged about this before) and there was such a gap that we could never "get to it."  With this being my 3rd year at Red Hawk I've been able to "catch-up" my students and get them where I'd like them to be in the sequence.  With them reading ti at this point in the school year I'm hoping that we can start to get into altered tones before the end of the year!

Okay, I took a tangent, but here's a song that my mom actually told me about that can be found in "Singing Games and Rhymes for Middle Years", which is published by the National Youth Choirs of Scotland.  I can't find nor do I have a primary source for the song

I can't find nor do I have a primary source for the song.  But, I'm using it with my kids regardless because it contains ti  in a pattern that they haven't practiced as much.

Here the song:

The game is super fun and the kids LOVE it:

Formation: lines of 6-7 students, all facing "forward" in the line.

Action:  The first person of each line has a playground ball.  On the first beat of the song they bounce the ball.  On the second beat they catch the ball.  On beats 3-4 they pass it over their head to the person standing behind them.  That student takes the ball and repeats the pattern of bounce-catch-over head (2 beats for this action).  This repeats through the end of the song, for a total of 4 times through the pattern for the entire song.  The student who has the ball at the end of the song runs to the end of the line.  All the students in their line spread their legs and the student with the ball rolls the ball through the legs of their teammates.  The first team who rolls their ball through all their team members' legs "wins."

I have added that between rounds of play they have 10 seconds to shuffle their line.  If you don't do this, only the first 4 people in line get to bounce the ball and only the back people get to roll the ball.

Here are some pictures from one of my 5th grade classes playing the game:

First person is bouncing and catching the ball:

The ball is passed overhead

The second person bounced and caught the ball and is now passing it over head:

The last person (the 5th in line) got the ball at the end of the song, ran to the back and rolled the ball up between their team members' legs:

On my to-do list is to create a PowerPoint for them to practice reading this song.  It's quickly become a class favorite!

I wanted to let you all know about a collaborative Kodály blog that I'm taking part in!!!  Aileen Miracle, Lindsay Jervis and I started talking about it around Thanksgiving and are now getting it up and running (in huge part to Aileen's work, thanks Aileen!!!)  It's called Kodály Corner and will consist of blog posts from 8 different Kodály teachers from across the nation.  

Aileen has started us off with our first post and will be posting again this weekend.  There will be two blog posts weekly in which we will take turns sharing different teaching ideas and strategies.  Please head over to Kodály Corner to check it out!!

I hope you all have a GREAT week!!!

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Yankee Doodle

Hi everyone!  I hope you had a GREAT Thanksgiving!  I'm going to be breaking out the seasonal songs and games with my kids this week.  We have a little less then 3 weeks until Winter Break with one of those days being a late start.  So, I will see my Kinder-3rd graders 3 times and my 4th & 5th graders 4 times.  There's not really any time to start any new conceptual learning so this time will be spent with a lot of reinforcement of known concepts and a lot of prepping and repertoire building for when we get back.

My 5th graders are currently prepping ti.  This is the EARLIEST I've ever been able to do ti and I'm quite giddy.  They will also get to at least tim-ka (dotted eighth-sixteenth) before May and that too makes me giddy.  I have NEVER taught tim-ka!!  This is in part to it being my 3rd year with the majority of the kiddos and the other I really believe is that I'm teaching children who speak my same "native tongue."  You see, I worked in a "bilingual" school for 10 years prior to being at Red Hawk.  Bilingual is in quotes because it really was an English-language acquisition school.  90-94% of the students' first language was Spanish which means, with me being an English speaking teacher, they were learning in their second language or in a language which was new to them.  As much as I tried to learn repertoire that I could use in my teaching that was from their culture it couldn't replace the fact that I did not grow up with that musical language.

Wow, that was a tangent!

At any rate, back to ti.  My fifth graders are preparing ti, which means we're singing and playing and moving and creating with a lot of repertoire that includes ti.  This brings me to Yankee Doodle.

Mallory Harrison, our past ROCKE president, learned a hand clapping pattern at the OAKE National Conference last year at one of the sessions that she attended.  At Susan Brumfield's ROCKE workshop last year she briefly showed it to me.  I'm not sure if I remembered it correctly but here's the gist:  she learned it to Yankee Doodle (which, there is a fun play party for this song in "The Handy Play Party Book".  If you don't have this book, buy it for yourself as Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa present, you deserve it!).

Here's the "A" section, I'm sure you all know the song:

The hand clapping pattern, facing a partner, goes:
right hand (of partner)
clap (own hand)
left hand (of partner)
clap (own hands)
both (hands of partner)
clap (own hands)
both hands with partner, with inter-linking fingers.  (weave fingers like you are "folding" your hands, then twist your fingers so that they are towards you and your palms go to your partner).
back (against own hands)

Then the pattern repeats.  The 7th step is the hardest (and the hardest to explain)

This was a lot of fun, but we like to kick things up in the music room, so after the finger-weaving pat they changed partners (we were in concentric circles).

Here's a little video of one of my 5th grader classes so you can better see it:

I hope you all have a GREAT week!

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