Last year I taught music to a close to non-verbal boy with autism named Stephen.
We played a game in the class called Jingle at the Window. It involved the children sitting in a circle passing a tambourine from one child to the next. Each child held the tambourine just long enough to play 3 beats on it in time to the music.
Not only did Stephen take the tambourine, play his 3 beats and pass it on to the next child in time to the music, he judged where the tambourine would be in a particular part of the circle, ran to a point just beyond that, and succeeded in getting himself another turn out of the deal; very forward thinking I thought.
He is about 7 years old now and has gone on to play the drums. It is clear that he has great musical talent which is nurtured by his family.
Here are the kids learning to skip a beat and pass on the tambourine in time. As you can see, it’s not easy!
Here’s a great winter game the children love playing over and over. It can be played either as a finger play or like this:
Sung to the tune of Five Little Ducks
Have all children standing in a row
All the little snowmen in a row,
All the little snowmen made of snow,
Out came the sun and it shone all day,
(Pick two children’s names)
And Kathryn and Joshua melted away.
These two children fall down and stay down.
Repeat until all children have fallen down. Then you can mop up all of the kid puddles with a broom or mop. They love being mopped up. You can also pick one child to be the teacher who picks the two children to fall. The child/teacher sings the last line on their own:
And Matthew and Kaley melted away.
Encourage all children to sing except for the last line where the children are being picked.
I find that call and response songs are a great way to teach the children about the music, dance and drumming of countries like those in Africa. It is like the 3 R’s are: rhythm, recitation and repetition.
They love all of the aspects of the call and response style and I find them singing it long after we have completed the activity.
Through call and response, you can increase children’s vocabulary by linking together the small words they know, making bigger ones. This connecting of familiar linguistic patterns to make new ones is a great tool in vocabulary growth.
Some examples are words such as “POPULATION”, “MEDITERRANEAN”, “INFORMATION”.
For example, let’s start with the first word, POPULATION. All kids know the words “pop”, “you”, “lay” and maybe “shun”. The call and response could be done this way:
Call – Pop
Response – Pop
Call – You
Response – You
Call – Pop You
Response – Pop You
Call – Lay
Response – Lay
Call – Shun
Response – Shun
Call – Lay Shun
Response – Lay Shun
Call – Population
Response – Population
Lots of words can be broken down this way for fun learning for the children.
A West African call and response song I did on my video with the daycare kids can be found on this video:
It is called Toom-bah-ee-lero and features the Djembe drum with children doing their own creative dance and others playing drums.
In Canada, February 2 is Groundhog Day. The story goes that the groundhog peeks out of his burrow, and if he sees his shadow, we’re due for six more weeks of winter. If not, it will be an early spring.
Yesterday, at one of my daycares, my four-year-old class came running in, clearly excited about something. They all began grabbing me, pulling my face down to theirs. Clearly thinking they wanted a kiss I turned my face to the side for a kiss on the cheek. They kept turning my face back to theirs until I realized what they were getting at, rubbing noses!
I said “Oh, nose rub?” thinking about how in some cultures, nose rubs are a way of greeting each other.
“No!” they replied emphatically, “No! A groundhog kiss.”
The teacher of that particular class is quite imaginative and has passed this imaginative quality onto the kids.
Here is a song for the preparation of Groundhog Day that I found on a preschool education site.
