Allison and Charlie

ALLISON AND CHARLIE

 No, these aren't students names of mine, but they are names in music activities we did in 2nd grade and Kindergarten today.

"Allison the Camel" holds a near and dear place in my heart.  A certain educator friend informed me that when her daughter was in my music class and we sang this song and did activities with it, it became ingrained in her head.  And therefore, became a permanent fixture wherever they went.  

She sang it in the car, she sang it from afar.  She sang it in a tree, she sang to you and me. 

You get the point.

Allison a.k.a Alice the Camel is a very easy countdown song.  Today in 2nd grade we differentiated an easy song to be more challenging for this age.

In the book Listen, Sing, Rattle, Ding there are many popular, easy kid songs that help add those misc. instruments into the song.  I have a great deal of instruments in my room, but don't want to just "add" them in.  I want them to have a purpose. 

Allison's Camel begins with the song, teaching it to the few who might not have heard it before.  Next adds a rhythmic pattern using body percussion.  4 moves of pat legs, clap, snap and tap head are used with specific patterns.  We created a "Coda" to play on the last verse since the words change to "'cause Allison is a horse".  Coda, in Italian, means end and we discuss what this means in class.  I was so thrilled when I had several students remember it from last year when posed as a question.

Finally we transfer body percussion to instruments.  4 moves becomes 4 instruments.  They have kinesthetically played the rhythm on their body, now they transfer one of the rhythms onto their instrument.  Grouped together, they quickly figure out how to play the pattern or watch around to pick it up.

 

Drums play on "Boom, Boom, Boom".  Appropriate, right?

Rhythm sticks play on "Allison's Camel has".

Tambourines play on the "5 humps".  We had clapped this previously so tambourine is a natural transfer.

Triangles are on "So go, Allison, go". 

Sorry the video is so short.   They struggled holding it together on their own if I wasn't doing the body percussion.  :)

Today was the first day of Kindergarten specials!  They've been in school for 1 week as of this point.  They rotate between Music, Library and P.E. for 90 minutes.  Us 3 teachers are usually exhausted, can you imagine these poor little 5-year-olds?!?

They did really good today, especially since we had to go over expectations for the first few minutes.  Many new faces that enter my room and see "toys" and "when do we get to play with them"?

After expectations were done, we started off with a great Kindergarten game, "Charlie Over the Ocean".  In essence it is a glorified game of duck-duck-goose.  The difference is that "Charlie" walks around the outside of the circle and only touches one head at the end of the song on the words "can't catch me".  Then they chase around the circle racing back to their spot.

I learned this song at a class, by the teacher.  She taught us the 3rd phrase being "Charlie in the bathtub".  Being a folk song, who knows what the original words were. 

The video is a great demonstration that not all kids know those good ol' games we think they do, or maybe I didn't take the time and explain it good enough that he was supposed to race to the other person's spot.  This is why it's a great Kindergarten game.  They don't care.  They laughed and giggled, and cheered each other on.  It was a great start to Kindergarten specials and I can't wait to see what's ahead.