Ancient Armor

If you've been following Music K-8 for a few years, you know by now that we regularly offer songs based on dinosaur themes. We've learned that this is possibly the most popular and successful subject for teaching musical concepts, such as the 6/8 time in this song, and for singing and performing. Kids just enjoy the heck out of dinosaurs.

This time, our dinosaur stars are the armored giants. We've chosen to illustrate the ankylosaurus, shown here with a young one, because it is a perfect example of the song's theme. These creatures were gentle plant eaters. They only used their strength and weapons in defense. Their most terrible weapons were their tails, which had massive clubs at the ends, capable of delivering deadly blows to predators. The tyrannosaurus pictured on the lyric page (p. 46) is suffering from just such a blow.

Since we know your singers with lower, changing or changed voices will want to participate in this song, we have written an optional part 2 in their special range, from F below middle C to Eb above it. (There are cued higher notes for the F, too.)

This is one of those cases where we must absolutely insist you use the cassette when performing this song. It is full of great stuff. Its unique "medieval rock" style can only be captured with a real rhythm section, which we provide. But the best part of the this song is the horn section. You will hear quite a workout for the player who performed these parts in our recording session! It's worth having your students listen to just the instrumental version at least once to pick out all that is going on. They will appreciate it, as will you.

Another way to take advantage of this song is to try to use it across-the-curriculum. Get your classroom teacher involved - not just in the study of dinosaurs - but in a discussion of peace and aggression. These creatures didn't want to fight, but they had to. Can your students think of modern day analogies to their situation? What would they do?