Bears Level: Key Stage 1 - Skills & games

Bears Statues (pitch, tempo)

Here's your chance to have fun playing the xylophone! Tell the children you are going to play notes that go with Big Bear, Tiny Bear, Lazy Bear and Busy Bear and ask them for advice about how each bear's notes might sound, aiming to reinforce the principles of:

• short xylophone bar = high sound = Tiny Bear
• long xylophone bar = low sound = Big Bear
• slow sounds = Lazy Bear
• quick, jumpy sounds = Busy Bear

Decide on what sort of statue is needed to show each of the bears then match the playing with the bears. Each time you change from one sort of playing to another, the children have to make a statue of the right bear.

Graphic Scores (structure)

The structure of the first part of The Bear Went Over the Mountain song can be shown in pictures. The Bear went over the mountain is sung three times, then To see what he could see is sung just once, like this:

First the children could invent actions to show what the bear is doing in each line, as they sing the song again. The next step is to make their own graphic scores of the song using cut-out pictures that they have drawn, or by drawing symbols.