Way Behind #1

These last two months of school have just been a blur.  Now that my concerts are over, I am trying to find my desk, my lesson plans and my sanity.

The week of Halloween seems like forever ago, and that was the last time that I thought of updating this blog.  I intentionally took picture to share and now that Christmas is a week away, I better get my Halloween blog up-to-date.  :)

I'm not a huge fan of Halloween.  For no particular reason, I just have other holidays I spend more time on than this one. I do, however, have a game that I do every year and the kids love it from Kindergarten up to 5th grade.  They request it every year.

"Who Is In This Forest" is a game that I learned when I observed another music classroom and watched that teacher.  I simply wrote the words down and the melody on my own so I can't find it printed to give anyone credit for the song. 

  Who is in this forest on this Halloween night?

  Tell me who......Who?  Is singing tonight.

That's it.

The melody is very simple, easy to teach, easy to learn and easy to play in d minor.

The game is basically another version of playing "hot and cold".  We hide a laminated, paper owl around the room.  One student hides it, another finds it.  We lead the "finder" to the owl by singing louder as they get closer or softer if they are far away from it.  It's a very basic way of introducing dynamics (louds and softs) to my younger students, but a way to introduce the term crescendo and decrescendo (gradually louder and gradually softer) to my older students.

The only rule with hiding the owl is that some of it has to be visible.  Without that rule they make it impossible to find.  Kindergarten tends to be very repetitive with their hiding skills.  5th grade can get very creative and often like to challenge me to find it.

An example of the wing showing while hiding the owl.

Students look high and low.

Found the owl!

The whole room is available to hide it.

The owl hides in the strangest places.

The owl was trying to make a phone call.

They think they are super cool when they get to go behind the piano to look as that is an off-limits area.

Owl feet.  Technically visible, so it counts.

Trying everywhere around the room.