Ourselves & Our Friends Level: Early Grades - Introductory

Introducing the Children (and Mrs Crocosaurus!)

Here are the lovely Early Grades/Pre-K children of Forton School who demonstrate, in our videos, how they learned lots of the Music Playtime activities. The videos span a whole school year, three terms, so you'll see different groupings as some children move from Early Grades/Pre-K into Key Stage 1. Several of the children had only just started nursery and we begin with their very first music session.

But who's that green creature? Mrs Crocosaurus is half crocodile and half dinosaur and she comes to help us sing in tune. She likes to hear clear words and she enjoys only beautiful singing! She supervises the accuracy of the singing and the children seem to value her opinion over that of humans!

Introducing your Sing-Song Voice! (pitch)

You will use your sing-song voice in lots of the topics in Music Playtime. It's a kind of initial building block that gives teachers the confidence to start singing and helps the children to begin pitching notes accurately. Sing-song voices are quiet and controlled, teaching the children that beautiful is better than loud.

Learning Names Through Chanting

Spaceships!

Chanting just means speaking rhythmically. Here's a chanting game that will help a new group of children - and you - to learn everyone's name. Children are learning new words every day and soon understand what chanting is if you ask them to join in with their 'chanting voice'. Line the children up, having already put out hula hoops, one per child.

Start by leading the first few children to a hoop as you chant their names in the rhyme. Once the children understand what to do, you can clap in time too. All the children will eventually stand or sit one per hoop.

To put the hoops away, reverse the game and chant, 'Sophie bring your spaceship' (line 1) and 'Harry bring your spaceship' (line 3), and so on.

• Sophie go to your spaceship
• We're going to chant, and say a rhyme
• Harry go to your spaceship
• We're going to chant and clap in time

Meet Luchia, our Music Playtime Singer

Next, I'd like you to meet Luchia Law, the singer on virtually all the sound files. Here she is singing The Wheels on the Bus, which you'll find in the Going Places unit. Most of the songs lend themselves to mime, which you can see Luchia doing here. Mime is great fun, it helps with understanding the meaning and character of a song and the children can do it with, or without, singing the words.

The Wheels on the Bus - Activity

Try asking the children if they think Mrs Crocosaurus would like Luchia's singing. Hopefully, they will say. 'Yes'! If you ask why, you may get the same answer from all the children and it will go something like, 'Because she likes it'. This is fine - little children will almost certainly never have been asked this question before and it gives you the chance to say what you like about it! You could say that Luchia:

• sings the right tune
• uses her singing voice, not her talking voice
• sings not too fast and not too slow
• makes a lovely sound - not shouty and not as quiet as a mouse.

Paired Activities

Music is good for learning how to work with a partner. Children also love to interact musically with an adult, so try to grasp any opportunity to join in with a child who is exploring instruments in the music corner. There is value in modelling a simple activity such as how to 'ting' Indian Bells so that they ring out, and having a child copy you.

Circle Activities

I like to do most music activities sitting on the floor with everyone in a circle. Children of this age are endlessly fascinating because of their phenomenal rate of learning and one of the things I found this group of children needed to learn first was how to sit in a circle! To make it easier, you could first put removable stickers in a circle, to act as place markers.