Improvise With Crawdad

This Summer we have worked on simple improvisation by looking at the pictures in the Music Together book and picking our favorite thing(s) to sing about.  Last week we looked at the picture for Crawdad.  I love making up fun rhyming verses about the pictures, but I feel like it is a lot easier to make up one word repetitive verses in class.  Repeating your favorite thing over and over is easier to sing and easier for others to follow along with.  It is also easier for the kids.  

At home however, I encourage you to come up with fun rhyming verses!  It can be about a Music Together song, something your child drew, or a part of your daily routine.

Here are my made up rhyming verses for Crawdad.  Try them at home.  Feel free to add your creative verses in the comments below the post for others!

Crawling like a turtle really slow honey 

Crawling like a turtle really slow babe

Crawling like a turtle really slow, I've got no place I've got to go

Honey oh baby mine

Jumping like a frog up and down honey

Jumping like a frog up and down babe

Jumping like a frog up and down, we'll jump right up then sit back down 

Honey oh baby mine

Hopping like a bunny up and down honey

Hopping like a bunny up and down babe

Hopping like a bunny up and down , we'll hop hop hop all over this town

Honey oh baby mine

See the sun up in the sky honey

See the sun up in the sky babe

See the sun up in the sky, wear sunscreen or you will fry 

Honey oh baby mine

I'm a tree blowin in the breeze honey

I'm a tree blowin in the breeze babe

I'm a tree blowin in the breeze, I'm full of pollen that'll make you sneeze

Honey oh baby mine

I'm gonna get my bucket full honey

I'm gonna get my bucket full babe

I'm gonna get my bucket full, while you use that line and hold that pole 

Honey oh baby mine

I've caught something on the line honey

I've caught something on the line babe

I've caught something on the line, I'll hold on tight and make it mine

Honey oh baby mine

Fell in water oh no honey 

Fell in the water oh no babe

Fell in the water oh no, It's really wet in the crawdad hole

Honey oh baby mine

What We Do At The Montessori School

I wanted to share with you some of the fun things your children have

been working on in music this Spring.

We began listening to, and identifying instruments by reading the book

Zin, Zin A Violin.  The TV show Reading Rainbow has an episode

available on iTunes that I recommend
.   

https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/reading-rainbow-vol.-9/id563699274

Each week we have been listening to a piece of music from

Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals.  We are working on listening,

instrument identification, and movement.  Before I tell the students what

animal the music is about they are invited to move with the music,

tell me what instruments they hear, and guess what animal they think the music

is about.  They come up with some amazing answers!

I would also recommend exploring the San Francisco Symphony’s kids website, sfskids.org, to play with instruments and musical terms.

We are working on small two and four beat rhythm patterns.

Children develop the ability to speak rhythm patterns first and then

put them in their bodies.  

(If you took Music Together with your child when they were younger you may remember that we always keep the beat on instruments, but only speak rhythm patterns, never play or clap them.)

We began by doing a simple chant called Can You Do What I Do?  Ask

you child to teach you how to play.  Animal sounds are fun to make up four beat rhythms with!

Some of the older children are ready to clap, stomp, and tap the rhythms that they can say.

We are looking at simple notation.  The students all identified that the dot, or

circle, is the note, and how many notes are written on the paper.  We

notated rhythms to go along with the books Gobble, Gobble Crash and

Jump, Frog, Jump.  Each child clapped along with the story and took

a turn pointing to the rhythm at the end of class.

Today the kids got to notate their own names!  Each name is two beats

long.  Most of the class has names with two syllables and notated

their name with two quarter notes. A few friends have names with three

syllables and used two eighth notes and one quarter note.  All of the

kids were very proud of their work, and so am I!

Last Lollipops Concert Until Fall! Don't Miss Out!

I highly recommend the Charlotte Symphony Lollipops concerts.  We have taken our kids since they were tiny.
Starting at 10:00 kids can explore, touch, and play instruments of the orchestra.  They can also join in drum circles, make their own instruments, and do coloring pages.
The concert is designed specifically for kids.  There is usually a story, puppets, dancers, or something else engaging.  This one will have dancers.  Since it is for kids it is a great opportunity to teach your child about the orchestra without worrying too much about a little noise or having to leave for the bathroom.

http://www.charlottesymphony.org/EventDetails2.asp?ID=680 ONCE UPON A TIME, WITH NCDT SCHOOL OF DANCE
Jacomo Rafael Bairos, Conducting
Date: 5/4/2013
Time: 11:00 am
Location: Knight Theater
Cost: $15.50 - $24.50
BUY TICKETS	Details: Maureen O'Boyle, NarratorOnce upon a Saturday May morning, the Charlotte Symphony joins students from North Carolina Dance Theatre to present beloved fairytales from throughout the land. Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, The Frog Prince by the Brothers Grimm, the Russian folktale The Firebird, and other stories will have your family living happily ever after.  Series Information: Entertaining and educational, the Lollipops series introduces children to great music while expanding their hearts and minds. 3-concert subscriptions starting at $36. Additional Information: Pre-concert festivals begin at 10 a.m. in the Knight Theater Lobby; children explore music through hands-on activities including a lively drum circle, music-related arts and crafts, and The Symphony Guild of Charlotte's "Musical Petting Zoo." Stay after each concert for engaging art activities next door during the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art's Family Day event. Free for kids; $4 for adults. Info at 704-353-9200.

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

  

This Train

Fun video of "This Train," a great song from the Winter collection!



 We have another spiritual in the Spring session.  These songs are important because they are a part of American history.  "This Train" began as a spiritual and then was adapted to by Woodie Guthrie, and others, to be a folk song as well.

African American spirituals often had code words.  Sometimes in reference to the underground railroad.  To learn more about spirituals and their meanings click here.