Submitted by Dawn Bray, Belgrade, Montana
Idea posted February 10, 2009
I have used "Apples And Bananas" from Music K-8, Vol. 16, No. 1 in a nutrition unit to help children hear rhythm accurately and revise lyrics to include other foods, specifically vegetables. Students worked alone or in groups to fill in the blanks on their worksheet, focusing on maintaining the original rhythm of "Apples And Bananas." "I like to eat, eat, eat ________________ and ________________." I give them a bank of words to select from, including familiar and unfamiliar vegetables, such as carrots, tomatoes, peas, rutabagas, parsnips, zucchini, etc. They were encouraged to come up with other vegetables as well. Classes developed six verses to match the accompaniment track and voilà, they had their original song. I found nice photos of the vegetables online, and we made posters of these for our presentation, with their names typed underneath. Our audience of younger students then had a visual cue and a printed label of each vegetable to read, and could sing along on the repeated phases. An extension would be to use words from other food groups. Students could identify which food groups they used in their verse to check their understanding of food groups.