Candles Glow Speech Piece

Planning holiday concerts is always tricky. I want to have all of my students diverse celebrations represented.  I struggle with finding music that represents everyone and isn't too much Christmas, but just enough, or too much Kwanzaa, and not enough Hanukkah, or too much ________ or not enough ______.  It is a tough balancing act made tougher by the limitations of the theme of holiday.  It is not a "winter" concert as it happens right before we break for the holidays and most of my families celebrate Christmas or a combo of Christmas/Hanukkah or Christmas/Kwanzaa and a few families are Muslim, which is difficult.
Candles are a theme that is inclusive and not exclusive.  This year our theme is "The Warmth of a Winter Candle".  We are performing "Just One Candle", from Music K-8, which is really love and accessible to all. Students are also performing one of their favorites, called Give Light, in addition to several other pieces. I blogged about Give Light- an incredibly beautiful song, a few years ago. The music and post is here.

I wanted to put together a speech piece with several ostinati performed vocally and with non pitched percussion.  This could be used to create movement, or as a drum canon, or as an A Section with small groups performing question and answer improvisations on Orff instruments in a pentatonic key as alternating sections to create a rondo, or it could be used to create a melody.
I am going to let my oldest grade -4th, decide how to perform it.  I can't wait to see what they come up with! 
I love seeds of ideas.. let me know how you use it. It is presented a couple ways below- one with speech only, the other has a possible idea with body percussion.

Nutcracker Bucket Drum Routine UPDATED and with VIDEO!

It is a teacher workday today and I am in the midst of chaos as I finalize my holiday concerts.  We have just started Halloween music and are skipping over Thanksgiving as I have limited time to prepare concert music. My December is usually packed- two days before school is out for the Holiday Break I have 3 concerts!  So we are rehearsing pretty much all of December and I have no extra time to squeeze in lessons on Nutcracker but I tend to do a little the first week back in January and of course, I play Nutcracker Music as students are entering and sing all my transitions to Nutcracker music and frequently add a movement piece into either the concert program or as a parent participation piece, which they LOVE!
I created a bucket drum routine several years ago:

Here is the video (excuse the tee shirt and lazy hair/no makeup; it was a teacher workday!)

Here is a nice listening map to the Nutcracker March:

And for all you heavy metal fans, I LOVE this one:

December Favorite Activities

December is CRAZY, isn't it?  So much going on, so little time.. etc.  I have two concerts that turn into four as the little kiddos come to watch the bigger ones and vice versa, then the concerts for the parents.  We call them "Holiday Concerts" but I am very careful to be inclusive and not exclusive about singing songs from various perspective.  Tricky, tricky! So, December is always extra busy with these concerts and sometimes, like this year, our final concert is the day before the Holiday Break, so I don't have too much time for other activities.  But I try to sneak in a few between rehearsing music.
Of course, I love the Nutcracker, so it goes without saying that it is a piece of music I love to have students get into.  Sometimes we watch segments of the Nutcracker "The Motion Picture" version (sets designed by Maurice Sendak of "Where the Wild Things Are" fame).  I almost always have students perform Trepak in a variety of ways, either using the Bucket Drum Activity:   http://ofortunaorff.blogspot.com/search/label/bucket%20drum or using Artie Almeida's excellent resource, "Parachutes and Ribbons and Scarves, Oh My!".  There is an AWESOME parachute activity my fourth graders BEG to do again and again in there on page 47 that goes with Trepak!  Artie also has a ribbon wand activity to Trepak in the book.
In the same book there is a paper plate activity (great for the littler musicians) to the Nutcracker March as well as a candy cane dance and a stretchy band activity to the same piece.
An easily accessible song about Snowflakes with Orff accompaniment (very simple) is here:
http://ofortunaorff.blogspot.com/2012/11/winter-snowflakes-song-with-orff.html (original post).  Here is the song:

Another activity we use is the Elf on the Shelf piece I wrote last year.. dreamed it, actually.. original post here:

http://ofortunaorff.blogspot.com/2013/12/elf-on-shelf-speech-piece-with-ostinati.html

Whatever you choose to do this season, keep 'em singing and keep 'em moving!  :)
Blessings and Merry Christmas!