Gardens & Growing Level: Key Stage 1 - Listening, appraising & movement

Country Gardens (timbre, pulse)

This is a cheerful piece of music called Country Gardens, arranged by the composer Percy Grainger, just right for walking in time through a pretend garden. It would be good to do this outside because you need a biggish space.

I suggest that you help the children to make tissue paper flowers or petals to be strewn around the area in advance. Ask the children to imagine they are walking through a garden, smelling the roses and picking up flowers and letting them flutter to the floor, pointing up at the blossom on the trees.

After they have moved to the music, the children can watch the video and see which instruments make the sounds. It's good, in this technological age, for children to see how the sounds are made by real instruments.

Name That Tune!

Many children will know this tune. It's fun to begin with clapping the rhythm - a few children might guess the tune just from hearing it clapped.

The next stage is for you to play the tune, either on a recorder, chime bars or whatever is available, or by playing the soundfile. If you learned to play the recorder as a child, you will definitely know it! The notes are:

• B A G A B B B
• A A A B D D
• B A G A B B B
• G A A B A G G

Charlie is playing it for you here, on descant recorder:

The tune is usually called Merrily We Roll Along but it's also the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb so, of course, either answer is correct.

Once the children have named the tune, they can learn to play it too on recorders, chime bars, xylophones or a keyboard.

• Merrily we roll along
• Roll along, roll along
• Merrily we roll along
• Right down the grassy hillside