BEFORE GETTING STARTED
Look again at Part 1 (Nursery World, 26 June, p16) about planning a session. Remember also that when organising sessions around song, it's better to use the word 'sound' rather than 'noise' (which can suggest a bit of a racket!).
THE SESSION
Part 1: Warming up
- Start by singing songs that children can act out alone and standing up, such as 'I'm a little teapot' or 'Humpty Dumpty' or 'Puffer train'. After singing them through a few times, ask the children to listen to the rhythm you tap out on a tambour and act out the correct song accordingly. These three songs have quite distinct rhythms and so are relatively easy to identify.
Part 2: The main teaching session
Know what you want to teach and how it links to the last lesson - for example, to help children sing and act out at the same time, thereby developing motor co-ordination, or to enable children to appreciate song, rhythm and rhyme.
- You can organise ring songs, such as 'Here we go round the mulberry bush' or 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' or 'One little elephant balancing'. Everyone, including adults, should join in. They have to be movement songs, not just action rhymes.
- Play a game such as 'The wizard'. Get the children in a circle, with one child in the centre to be the wizard, wearing a wizard hat. Making suitable magic spell movements, everyone sings this song:
The wizard makes a magic spell,
He works on it all night.
He makes strange sounds
With his strange voice
Beneath the moon's cold light.
Then the wizard, followed by the children, moves about the space, making extraordinary vocal sounds and movements echoed by everyone else. When he has finished, the children move back to form a circle and chant 'Who is the wizard, who is the wizard, is the wizard you?' as the wizard walks around. The child closest to the wizard on the word 'you' is the next wizard.
- Vary the approach by asking children to sing songs quickly, slowly, loudly, softly.
Part 3: Warm down
- Divide the children, and get one group to sit on the floor, spaced out. Have the others gallop around the sitting children singing 'Ride a cock horse'. Change groups and sing, say, a song called 'Walking through the jungle' from Game-songs with Prof Dogg's Troupe (A&C Black). Finally, sing a quiet made-up song to the tune of Frere Jacques, such as, 'We are sleepy, we are sleepy, all lie down, all lie down, close your eyes, close your eyes, we are tired, we are tired'.
Helen Bilton is the author of books on outdoor play for the early years and PGCE programme director at the University of Reading.