Music

1. March/walk/run/hop around a circle that has different shapes and colors. When the music stops, get on a specific shape. Identify shape, characteristics, and color.

2. Musical Hula Hoop Name Recognition. Have each child’s name on a piece of sturdy paper. Place these name tags inside the hula hoops which would be spread out all around the gym. Have the children run/walk/hop/march to music around the hula hoops. When the music stops each child finds own name. To begin again, the children hand their name tags to the teacher who will mix them up and replace them in a different hula hoop while the music plays. Repeat as long as the children are challenged.

3. Musical Numbers. Place several numbers (all of them repeated several times) on the floor. Call out a mathematical problem. Begin the music. Children move around or over the numbers. When the music stops, the children run and pick up the number that answers the problem. More than one child can hold the same number. An alternative is to have the children make the shape of the correct answer with their bodies.

4. Children move to rhythmic beat of different types of notes: whole, half, quarter, etc.

5. Have children express music through movement. For example, have children walk slowly, quietly and smoothly while listening to Smetana’s Mouldau, then have the march, skip, and hop while listening to Grainger’s Children’s March: Over the Hills and Far Away, based on the same tune. Allow children to add their own expressive movements.

6. Listening Shoes. Using a hand drum, the teacher can create stories with movement using different tempos for a variety of steps: walk, job, step over puddles (long), tip-toe (quiet, sneaky), giant (fee, fie, foe, fum), gallop (long, short), skip (short, long). Suggested stories include collecting leaves on a windy fall day, circus animals, and playing with a friend at the playground.

7. Pumpkins in a Pumpkin Patch. Students stand in a circle. Teacher or designated student has an orange ball in the middle. Ball is tossed to a child and back to the teacher on the beat of the poem.

Pumpkins in a pumpkin patch, orange and round,
Waiting happily without a sound.
Along comes Mary and what do you think?
Pumpkin pie as quick as a wink!

Name called out is that of student holding the ball on the beat. This child may then toss the ball or play the beat on an instrument for the next turn. Children step in place to beat.

8. Circle Movement Canon. Students stand in a circle and create a movement pattern or follow the teacher’s pattern while chanting a poem or rap. My favorite is Jack Prelutsky’s Tyrannosaurus Was A Beast (from his book with the same title).

Tyrannosaurus was a beast -- (step in 4 beats)
That had no friends to say the least -- (pat thighs 4 beats)
It ruled the ancient out-of-doors -- (clap & step back 4 beats)
And slaughtered other dinosaurs -- (snap & turn 4 beats)

When the students feel comfortable with the pattern, try it in a two-part canon (a round) with every other student being group two.

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