Extra Activities To Try

Here is a list of extra activities from class to try at home, in the car, and about town!

Sneekin' Round the Room:

If you haven't tried using the sneaky beginning of this song to get your child to switch gears I fully recommend it!  If you need them to focus or calm down try singing the beginning phrase and the "shhhh" and see if it works.  It works great in our family!  It's a nice song/trick to have when you need it.

Stick Tune:

You copied me doing some rhythmic improvisation with this song last week in class.  This week you get to try a little.  Put the CD on and try it along with the CD.  When that becomes easy try it without the CD.  A little rhythmic improvisation is great to do back and forth with your little one in the car.  I always love using animal sounds for this too.

Betty Martin:

This song has a some great melodic improvisation on the CD track.  We also did this in class last week.  Try making up your own while the voices on the CD make up theirs.  

We also changed the name Betty Martin to your children's names.  That is a very simple way to improvise.  What else could you say "Hey" to by changing the name?

Hippity, Happity, Hoppity:

Hopefully this odd meter song is getting (or will become) more familiar to you after trying it in class for several weeks.  It's a fun way to explore odd meters.  The song Blue Rondo Ala Turk by Dave Brubek has the same meter to it.  You may have heard it playing before class.  Check it out below and see if you can match our movements, or come up with new ones, from Hippity, Happity, Hoppity.

Our play along this week was Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy sung by the Andrews Sisters.  Enjoy watching, singing, playing along, and dancing at home!

Odd Lullabies

Phyllis, one of the teachers and co-owners of Music Together of Charlotte, sent the following "Lullaby Challenge" to her families this for the Spring session.  

     I want to issue the Lullaby Challenge (my invention---not a 'real' thing).  The two lullabies on this collection are   

     rare, not found in most typical homes.  BUT, if we don't learn them, then the last song before the Goodbye 

     Song is just going to a clock-watching event, because if the adults aren't singing, then the kids will be a little   

     nutty coming off of the playalong. Adult singing is imperative to bring the energy into focus, calm us all for our 

     last sweet moments together for the week. So, please listen to the lullabies; at least shoot for knowing the 

     melodies so we can 'loo' and 'la'.

     CRADLE SONG is actually a William Blake poem, set to a melody (I've mentioned this in some classes), so 

     that's kind of neat. A tad wordy, but not unapproachable.  The full poem, for the truly ambitious:   

     http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-cradle-song/

     RAISINS AND ALMONDS is just lovely, and could open a good discussion about why is a white goat going 

     grocery shopping?  A couple of sources, if you're interested- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raisins_

     and_Almonds, 

     and from a Q&A blog:  In the Orthodox synagogue, in those old sexist days,the women were not allowed in the main   

     area, but they had a "peanut gallery" up above. There was one ceremony, where the little boys are supposed to have 

     reached a certain point in their religious development (not the Bar Mitzvah--that is when they are no longer little boys.) 

     The women shower the little fellers with small bags of raisins and almonds from above. It is a traditional gift for boys 

     who reached that stage.      So the lullaby is the mother telling her infant son how proud she will be of him someday.

My hope is that this information will help you understand the lullabies in this collection a little better.  They may be a little different than what you are used to, but they are lovely songs to soothe your child.  

Please make sure you sing lullabies to your children in class and especially at home.  Some day's it may take many repetitions, but hearing a loved one sing a lullaby is soothing to every child.  It is a gift they will keep for a lifetime!

Ten Little Indians?

In the second week of Spring classes we sang Hay Ya Na from the Music Together collection.  I enjoy singing Native American music because you get to use your chest voice.  Using your chest voice instead of your head voice is different than the way we normally sing today.  I feel like I'm forcing louder sounds out when I'm singing with my chest voice.  Have fun with this different style of singing at home and in class!



Our free dance was a fun polka version of the song 10 Little Indians.  I don't have a link to listen to it all for free, but you can buy the mp3 on Amazon for under a dollar if you're interested.

My kids love this version of 10 Little Indians.  The regular version of this song was a standard preschool counting song when I was a kid.  You can use it to teach your kids counting forward 1-10 and backward 10-1.  It's also a great way to work on fine motor skills by showing how many with your fingers.

The word Indian is no longer considered "politically correct."  But as a home school mom I think omitting the term completely does my children a great disservice.  When Columbus sailed to America he thought he was in India.  That is how we got the term Indian instead of Native American.  

We have a dry erase map at our house and I had my preschooler and kindergartner simply draw a line from Europe to America and then look for India.  They could very easily see that America is in the way if you are trying to get to India.  We discussed why Columbus wanted to get to India, to buy and sell goods, and how his train of thought to go around the world would have been right if America wasn't in the way. 

Correct map of the World

What Columbus thought.

US History Images website has other great information to explore.

Here is one of the first maps of a round world from 1482.  It was made by Ptolemy long before Columbus thought the world was round.  Click here for more information