It's almost Thanksgiving time and our preschoolers are learning a new Thanksgiving themed fingerplay called "A Pumpkin for the Pie." While we learned this fingerplay, students talked about their favorite foods that they eat around Thanksgiving. This rhyme includes pumpkin pie, apples, and a heavy turkey!
Preschoolers have been hard at work at a new simple song called "Pitter Patter." To learn a simple song, students listen several times without singing. Through this whole song approach, students are encouraged to listen carefully in order to learn the words and tune of the song. Then, they are able to successfully sing the song very easily when allowed to sing themselves. Independence is gained when students sing these songs as a solo during class.
Kindergarteners are hard at work preparing for their first ever holiday program, but there is still work to be done in the music room! We are continuing our work on fingerplays with the rhyme "A Chubby Little Snowman." I love how this fingerplay encourages children to speak with expression, a skill that we also need to apply to our singing.
We are busy getting ready for our holiday program in first grade, but we are still working on important skills like developing our singing voices. One of the best ways to work on singing in tune is to sing echo songs. Students only have to remember a short fragment of a song and repeat it back to sing these songs successfully.