Awesome Animals

Every year we publish a whole school musical revue within the first few issues of Music K-8 Magazine. It's a revue that you can perform with all of your students or just one or more select classes, as you prefer. In this first issue (September/October 2015), you will find the first two songs of this year's revue. The remaining songs, script, teacher's guide, and other extras will be found in the third issue this year (January/February 2016).

This year's revue topic is one of our very, very favorites – animals! The ways that you use what we give you is totally up to you. You could simply perform it as a program, and/or you could use it for cross curricular teaching and reinforcement. If you choose the latter, be sure to let your classroom teachers know that you have this relevant resource. The applications can go as deep as you/they want, studying species, habitats, behavior, etc. While you could certainly connect your discussions to the fact that human beings are also animals, for our musical purposes, we are focusing on non-human animals.

The opening song, "Awesome Animals" shares its name with the revue. It's got a pop flavor to it with some elements of folk music that feel natural, as in "nature." Appropriate for an animal song, we think. It's also delightfully upbeat and catchy, especially at the chorus. You'll note some neat and quirky rhythms there, which enhance the pop styling and give it a contagious energy.

The first time through, the song is sung in unison. On the D.S., you may wish to introduce the optional second part. To assist you in teaching this part, we have isolated it and put it on our web site for your free access. (You can find information about this and our other downloadables in the box on page 62.)