Music and Movement: Big Woods Orchestra

I'm back for a summer session of Music and Movement classes, with activities related to the Dream Big, Read CSLP. I'd been saving the book The Big Woods Orchestra to use for summer reading before it went out to the public, so I was excited to finally find a good place to share it.

July 6: 10:15 and 11am

Opening Song: Glad to See You by Peter and Ellen Allard
"When I'm glad to see all of you, I like to clap my hands, stamp my feet, I especially like to shake my hips (wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!), I even like to nod my head, and then I like to see how many times I can blink my eyes."

Song: Aikendrum by The Nields (Listen to a sample on Pandora)
I made a clip-art flannel to go with the song. I put the man together with the kids before we sang the song so we could talk about what each piece of clothing was made of. So then as we sang the song I pointed to each of the pieces and we air-strummed our ladles.

Song: Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven
I let the playlist automatically start into this song. As it started, I talked a bit about Beethoven, and why he was a special composer, since he became hard of hearing. This song is also in 3/4, aka waltz time, so we talked about that and practiced counting fast, slow, and even slower 3s, using our fingers. Then we pretended to be moons and turned in circles with our arms out wide. When the kids started losing interest, I reminded them that sometimes the moon looks like a banana, and challenged them to make their bodies look like one.

Transition Rhyme: Dance Your Fingers
Dance your fingers up, dance your fingers down
Dance your fingers to the side, dance them all around.
Dance them on your shoulders, dance them on your head,
Dance them on your tummy, and put them all to bed.

Flannel: Five Hoot Owls originated by Sunflower Storytime. My Hoot Owls were made by an enthusiastic teen, can you tell?


Movement Rhyme: Just Like an Owl from Read it Again, Mom!
Except I forgot to write down the tune, so this morning as I was preparing, I figured that the words fit to the tune of London Bridge, so that's what we sang it to instead of Wheels on the Bus. This was very fun, and I'm definitely using it again because it gave us a chance to talk about some of the characteristics of owls (totally improvised on my part during the first session).

Book: The Big Woods Orchestra by Guido van Genechten
This book has lots of delightful bird sounds to make as the animals warm up for a concert at dawn. There's tons to talk about in the book too-- the different birds (I toyed with the idea of sharing clips of the bird songs), the way the sky gets lighter the closer dawn comes, the word placement on the pages. Wonderful!

Song: Owl by Johnny Bregar from Hootenanny with egg shakers/maracas.

The more I look at this, the less sure I am that this was the order we did everything in. After "Dance Your Fingers" the sessions get a little fuzzy. :) Oh well! Guess it means I was too engaged in what we were doing to make the usual mental notes about how I was sticking or deviating from my intended plan!

CONVERSATION

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