Three Times Around Went Our Gallant Ship
I am trying not to be a delinquent blogger, although my life got a lot more hectic with the onset of music classes yesterday. I have completely forgotten since the beginning of last year that pre-schoolers know NOTHING in September. In the beginning of the year we work a lot on rules, moving around safely, etc. I like to do some songs they already know so we’ve been singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and the “ABC Song” as well as some material from the first lesson in First Steps in Music: Preschool and Beyond. “Chop Chop Chippity Chop” is always a big hit. We say the rhyme and make a chopping on the beat motion, then I let the kids take turns suggesting things to put into the “soup”. We make a big deal about tasting it at the end and I ask them to “show me with their faces” how it tasted. At the beginning of the year they all just copy me, but within a few lessons they normally adopt a hilarious variety of facial expressions.
Speaking of hilarious and having fun I ran across this short audio clip from last year that put a big smile on my face this morning. Towards the end of the year we learning the song “Our Gallant Ship” and talked about AB patterns, singing versus speaking, when the students did and did not hear an accompaniment, etc. Then we busted out the parachute and had a great time playing with it while we sang the song. This clip does not represent the world’s most amazing preschool singing, but I think it does capture the enormous amount of fun we had doing this lesson and it made my day to have such a strong reminder of how great teaching preschool music is!
