Asian Songs

It is almost Chinese New Year and I needed a few more songs to round out our songs from around Asia.  These songs are generic songs and could be used any time - not specific to Lunar New Year.

1. Jan Ken Pon Yo 

This is a Janken, or hand game song using "Rock, Paper, Scissors". It is a great mixed meter song, check out the previous post by clicking on the picture below.

2.  Hao Peng You

This is from my Sing a Song, Play a Game Book, and is such a fun game. This one is easy for even young singers!

3.  Cha Tsubo

This is from my Hands to Hands book and is a deceptively simple hand game that is really fun! Great for recorder also. My students create a B Section using names of teas!

 Hope you have fun with these - and that you find some things new for you and your students to sing and enjoy!

Chinese New Year 2020!

My family is Chinese American - our daughter was adopted from China so we celebrate many Asian holidays including Autumn Moon Festival and Chinese New Year, AKA Spring Festival. This year CNY begins January 25, 2020, just a couple weeks away! As CNY is a lunar holiday and based on the full moon, the date changes each year. The animal changes each year also, with this being the year of the Rat!

If you are born in the year of the rat, you are known for having quick wit, being hard working, being clever, successful, and great with money! Good for you!!

My students will learn about the holiday in many ways, including using all of this from previous posts:

Once we get through the videos and the book, we will learn about The Rat through the song, "The Quartermaster's Store" which features a rat!  

Then it's on to learning Xin Nian Kuai Le, or "Happy New Year" in Mandarin. 

The song and activities are all included in the older post above or click here. 

I will also be using these Chinese Zodiac Rhythm Cards with quarter and eighth notes - free from TpT and available here! 


I also really like this craft project and can see using it as a melody pointer. There are many others with free printables - click on the picture. 

Happy Asian/Lunar/Chinese New Year! Xin Nian Kuai Le or Gong Xi Fa Cai!

I Can't Wait for the Snow to Fall

This is a beloved folk song I learned long ago at a workshop and have loved ever since. The original folk song's words are, "I dont care if the rain comes down, I'm gonna dance all day". Needing a song for our holiday concert with a winter theme, I played around with this one and my students helped develop an easy orchestration and form we have loved using.

Sing the song as written, each time students sing the word, "dance" they strike a dance pose.
Clap "hey, hey" and patsch "carry me away".
For alternating sections, students came up with the idea of continuing the orchestration and humming the tune while doing dance moves.  Here's how it worked out:

A:  Song with orchestration
B:  Hum melody, orchestration continues; perform Macarena movements (this works out perfectly with the song and the dance can be performed twice).
A:  Song with orchestration
C: Hum melody, orchestration continues; perform the Floss (YUP.. what they voted for!).
A: Song with orchestration
D:  Hum melody, orchestration continues; freestyle- students perform movement of their choosing.
A:  Song with orchestration, end with "I'm gonna dance all day" 3 times followed by a final glockenspiel, "plink".

This was SO fun and really had my students moving and grooving. Good for any winter fun!

Hope you enjoy this one now or later!

Goings On

Hi everyone! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week - we stayed in our pajamas all day, watched the Thanksgiving Parade, played games and watched movies! It was so fun and relaxing and my family loved it - I did, too!
Week before that I was in Salt Lake City at the National American Orff Schulwerk Association's (AOSA) Conference which was amazing!  Truly love these peeps and the creativity and collegiality is very special and heart-warming. I attended some incredible sessions and loved reconnecting with folks I took Levels courses with and those who I have taught at Chapter workshops and State Conferences. This is also the one time of the year I see my editor face to face - Brent Holl of Beatin' Path Publications is a friend and amazing musician! Working on a new book can be stressful - and the editing process is difficult and full of discussions about which way to present material and what to leave out and what to include but Brent makes it easy!

One of my favorite finds at conference were the new musical sit spots!  There are several packs but I can see using this one the most frequently. For a quick assessment, lay them out on the floor and as students come in direct each student to stand on a specific note - Josiah, stand on a quarter note, etc.

Outside the conference center there were these amazing signs- so fun

and meaningful! 

We were also invited to attend a free open rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Singing with this group would completely ruin anyone for singing with a small choir ever again. Full orchestra and seating for 90,000 in the hall. AMAZING!

This morning on my fb site - @o for tuna orff I posted a video with a cup game to Trepak from Nutcracker. Click on the picture to go to the video. There is also a book/song/activity to use for Hanukkah season as well called "Shabbat Shalom".

Enjoy! Happy Holidays!

Pairing Partners without Pain

Grab your partner and promenade. I can't help but think of this when I hear the word, "Partner". 

We often ask our students to partner or pair up for dance, movement, instrument play, and other activities in the music classroom. Some of us have "work buddies" that are permanent or semi-permanent partners and others are more random and allow for student choice each time. 

My students are able to self-select and most of the time do a great job with this. Of course I am always aware of who will most likely need help or those that need a different kind of partner - a non-human one. AKA: Works Better Alone. 

Here are some things I have learned over the years about partnering:

1.  Expect Some Bumps

Expect some issues and be ready with strategies to help THAT group that may not be excited about working together. Know who to watch and who to encourage. Also know who is likely to dominate a conversation and try to influence/push/bully their ideas or thoughts in activities. This is especially important when working on creative ideas - someone will always think their idea is better and will be unable/unwilling to let others voices be heard.

2. Self -Selecting Partners

I train my students from a very early age (Kindergarten) to find a partner "sitting next to them". When my students self select partners, I know if there is an even or uneven number of students ahead of time. I am also looking for the student that may need some help in finding a partner. If an even number of students, everyone will have a partner. If an uneven number of students, I ask ahead of time who would like a buddy from the buddy basket.  Depending on the activity and materials, I also allow students who might work better with a non-human partner to get a buddy from the buddy basket.

3. Buddy Basket

Many moons ago I asked parents to donate Beanie Babies. I love using "Beat Buddies" and have several ways I use them. Along with the Beanie Babies came some super special animals and I have found others over the years that have made their way into a special musical basket called the "Buddy Basket". This basket is at eye level and students are able to choose a "buddy" from it.

There are many favorites, including the super soft panda and the silly monkey we call "Kissy Monkey" as he likes to kiss everyone on the neck and arms when he comes out for folk dancing. He has long arms with velcro and is a perfect partner for folk dancing or other movement requiring a partner.

4. The Beauty of Rock/Paper/Scissors

I am fortunate to have enough Orff instruments for each student. My class sizes are small and I have been at my school for 23 years and have built up my instrumentarium and unpitched percussion instruments. 

Orff Instruments

Often, and especially the first time we play something, I might want to have less sound and for students to learn from each other so they will partner. Immediately after partnering my students know they will need to rock/paper/scissors.. shoot! We do this for SO MANY THINGS.  It solves disagreements about order and other things. Once we have a "person who won" and a "person who did not win", I pick one or the other to go to the instruments and it isn't always the "person who won".  Those students select an instrument to play and of course, everyone moves to the back row to play the Basses. If two students are first to get there, they rock/paper/scissors to decide who will stay. It is a quick and effective means of determining who is going to play that particular instrument.  There are other rules in place about how often people go to the back row and we are constantly moving between instruments so no one gets the instrument for a long time. 

Unpitched Percussion

I have a lot of tambourines but do I want everyone in the classroom to play this instrument all at the same time? No, I don't care to have a headache for the rest of the day.  Sometimes too many instruments creates too much sound so we partner.  Same process as above with rock/paper/scissors which determines who plays first and who has to wait a turn to play.

5. Use a Rhyme to Switch Between Partners

I have several nonsense rhymes I use to switch partners and my students know when I say, "Intry mintry tribbledy fig, deema dima, doma dig, howdy powdy, noma nouchy, olliga bolliga boo" that it is time to switch. This allows for me to move partners without saying the words, "Please switch" and losing the beat of the song. We move from song and instrument play with first partner to the nonsense poem immediately into the song and instrument play again.  Nursery rhymes work perfectly, too, in case you don't want to learn a crazy nonsense rhyme -though it impresses the kids and they are AMAZED at these funny rhymes!

Here's to partnering with positivity! 

Hope you enjoyed this post, how do you use partnering in your classroom?

Bucket Drum Piece to Mozart's Turkish March - REMIX!

Over the past several weeks on my fb page -@o for tuna orff, I have been posting several live videos of the teaching process I have been using for a bucket drum piece to a piece of music my daughter found on youtube. She often listens to music while drawing (her favorite thing to do and she is an amazing young artist).  It is a remix of Mozart's Turkish March and is SO awesome!  I knew I needed to create a bucket drum piece for my top grade to perform at our Winter Concert and maybe a few other performances as well. Click here to see the final video performance on the o for tuna fb page.
Here is the score:

The pdf of the learning slides can be found here: Bucket Drum Mozart Turkish March Remix
They look like this:

The music can be found here:

Enjoy!

All Things PUMPKIN!

Mmmm... pumpkin pie.  Mmmm... pumpkin bread.   Mmmm... pumpkin spice.  A few weeks ago we were still in the 90 degree temps and I came across this fabulous pic:

Seriously, I do love everything pumpkin!  I also love using the word pumpkin (a perfect eighth note pair) in many ways in the music classroom in the fall.  It is also a very inclusive way to celebrate fall if you have students that do not celebrate Halloween.  Here are a few of my favorites:

1.  Pumpkin Chant

I just found this one yesterday and am already in love with this for my littles!  It has such a cute ending and ties in nicely to the Lynn Kleiner song "Peek a Boo" to use with scarves. I also love this as a lead in to the book, Pumpkin Soup (see below).

2.  Pumpkin Stew Song/Pumpkin Stew Book

I love this musical book-the cat plays bagpipes, the squirrel plays banjo, and the duck sings.  Insert the song, Pumpkin Stew after each page.   Click on the book to see it on Amazon.  Here is a video with an idea for a game with solo singing to play with the song. I use this song with Kindergarten and First Graders:

 I have a homemade fabric pumpkin with a zipper in the side and my students go on a hunt through the music room to find something small they can put in the pumpkin- mini containers of playdough, shaker eggs, castanets, finger cymbals, plastic spider and skull rings, markers, etc. have all made their way into our delicious stew!

3. Pass the Pumpkin

Check out the previous post here with the full activity and song.  My kids LOVE this one!

4. Pumpkins and Ghosts Game

This one uses foam ghosts and pumpkins (Dollar Tree or Wal Mart has these). Perfect for eighth and quarter note rhythm exploration!   Original post here. 

5. Five Little Pumpkins 

This is a well known chant and fingerplay.  It is wonderful to act out, add scarves and movement, too! Click on the book to link to amazon.

6.  Pumpkin, Pumpkin

Original post here - fun game and song!

7. Vanishing Pumpkin Book

This one is great for adding sound effects for each character.

8. Big Pumpkin Book

I have long loved this funny story of a witch who wants to make a pumpkin pie and can't get her pumpkin off the vine.  Along comes a ghost who tries, and then a vampire and several other characters. Of course, it is the bat who finally gets it off the vine.  Each time another character comes along students decide on an instrument sound for their character. Of course it is great for adding scarves, movement, and dramatic play also. 

What are some of your favorite pumpkin activities?