Chuck Stoffle

In this activity my students were asked to cut out the body percussion squares which represented specific sounds.  These were: snapping with your fingers, clapping with your hands, stomping with your feet and tapping your knee with your hand.  Then students were asked to glue their 16 squares onto the song page in which ever order they chose.  It could be a pattern or just random.  Next they practiced “playing” their body percussion song and also traded with others to play their songs.  Finally, each student performed their song in front of the class.  They loved being song writers and performers.

A colleague passed along this web site which lists every type of music around the world including the various artists and their songs.  It is really quite incredible.

http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html

Enjoy

As spring was approaching my kindergarten classes wanted to do something where we could create the sounds of spring.  So we brainstormed the sounds and decided to draw “spring sounds” first then try to create the sounds.  From their ideas I created a template for them to use which had lightning, frogs, birds, trees etc. and they used this to draw their “Sounds of Spring” picture on tracing paper.  This way they could spend more time creating the scene and not worry about the detail of the shapes.  I also made a couple of samples to provide some ideas in addition to providing actual pictures of the sounds we were trying to create.  After they spent about 20 minutes working on their drawings we chose one to attach the sounds to.  Since we chose a rain storm scene the students picked our shakers for rain, and a drum & symbol for thunder.  Here is our process with the final creation, in video format, at the end.

The video can be found at the link below…

This week we played instrument bingo.  It’s a simple game where kids listen to sound clips of instruments, online, then put the bingo chip on the game card covering the instrument they think makes that sound.

The game cards can easily be created on word using clip art from Google images.  It does take a little time to actually make the cards.  The simplest way is to print out the game cards on full sheet label paper then adhere them to really heavy card stock.  The bingo chips are actually poker chips.

For the sound clips I used:
http://www.dsokids.com
http://www.soundsnap.com

I drew instrument names randomly and then pulled up the sound on one of the two web sites.  It was almost as quick as using a bingo machine.

It was a great activity for assessing instrument awareness and sound connections.  The kids really enjoyed it.

This past we I decided to bring the outdoors inside and sing some campfire songs with my kindergarten classes.  We made it authentic with an artificial campfire complete with real logs.

We sang: Down By The Bay, Herman The Worm, Boom Chicka Boom, Bear Hunt, and five little ducks. It was a great activity as many of the kids have never experience camping before.  Everyone took turns leading the songs and providing suggestions for the various actions of each songs.

The campfire was relatively simple to make.  First take some long sticks, approx 30cm., and build a cone frame.  But, make sure you build it so that a light source can fit inside.  I used a flashlight lantern.  You will also need to decide how to support your cone.  I put my cone frame on a piece of cardboard and cut a hole in the bottom so it could all fit over the flashlight.  A lantern type of flashlight works best as the light comes from the sides and not the top.  Finally, you will need some logs to go around it.  I used some real logs which you can get from a farm or friend with a real fireplace.  Don’t forget to turn the lights off when you are singing.  The only downside is that you can’t cook marshmallows or hot dogs on it.

We wanted to make a set of classroom shakers for music.  So three of my kindergarten classes took on the challenge of making these great instruments.  We started with empty plastic bottles, filled them with beans and glued the lids on (very important unless you want to “spill the beans”).  Then we glued on small pieces of tissue paper and let them dry.  To tame the paper i.e. keep it flat after gluing, I gave them all a coat of water based urethane.  As you can see they turned out great and now we have a complete set for everyone in each of my five kindergarten classes.

This was a fun activity I used in a kindergarten class where we first put puzzles together that were made up of each page from the book then attempted to place the copied pages in order on the white board. Next, the students were assigned one page (with a partner) and chose from small pieces of paper, which had one of the story characters on it, and placed the appropriate characters in the envelope below their assigned picture.  Then, they performed the same activity again but this time with pictures of instruments. They were to determine what sound belonged in their picture and were given the choices of sticks, sandpaper blocks or a shaker.  Finally, we combined the responses from all five classes and came up with the most popular choices.  Each class then decided whether or not the choices were correct.

Students coloured cut out characters matching their choices and acted out the story many times using their characters and also the chosen instruments.  Each student had a role everytime the story was told. The goal was to have them choose the characters, instruments and dramatize the story.