My student teacher and I started the beat unit with her leading some movement shadowing to a recording of "Flight of the Bumblebee" with Bobby McFerrin and YoYo Ma (with more of a halftime beat to make it doable). Next, the students learned the chant to "Bee, Bee, Bumblebee" by rote:
Bee, bee, bumblebee,
Stung a man upon his knee
Stung a pig upon his snout,
Goodness me if you're not out!
I walked around with my handy Folkmanis bee puppet, tapping each child on the head with the beat. The child who was tapped on the word "Out" got to be the new bumblebee. Once the next "Bumblebee" was selected, the previous child performed the beat on rhythm sticks to keep occupied. My student teacher and I assessed both how the children kept a beat while they were the "bee" and when they had sticks, using a 5-1 scale. 5 meant the beat was performed precisely, 4 meant the beat was mostly performed accurately, 3 meant there were several mistakes, 2 means the child was goofing off and not trying. One meant the child was not participating. (I don't want to give full zeros at the elementary level). While the students were performing this activity, I kept the beat on tubano to see if the children could stay with the beat I established.
Since I have my classes for an hour, after this activity, the student teacher led them to a game of keeping beat using hula hoops. We used the same Bumblee chant for this game. The students were to tap a toe outside the hula hoop, then inside the hula hoop on the beat. Again, I played tubano to establish and maintain the beat. Most did a beautiful job!
Our final step was to use "Bee Beat Sheets" (which will be part of a whole Bee-themed package coming soon from the Orff-fully Good Music Store: Games and More. Using bee pencil toppers, the students tapped on a sheet with bee clip art as the student teacher pointed to the same images on the Smartboard and while I said the chant, playing along with the drum.
The things you can do with some pencil toppers, a puppet, and hula hoops. I will share more of the props I used for the loud/soft activities with second graders on another post. In the meantime, I need to muster up the courage to leave my Labor Day weekend and get ready for some new fun with my kiddos!
Future postings: Up the Ladder improvisation and creativity with sixth graders, Minecraft rhythm activities with fifth graders, and more on loud/soft with second grade. Take care, everyone!