Submitted by Martha Stanley, Tallahassee, Florida
Idea posted January 5, 2010
I came up with this activity that is cute for any grade you choose - I chose 2nd and 3rd grade.
Goal: Review lots of music vocabulary words dealing with tempo, pitch and dynamics (and/or whatever): piano/forte (and the "mezzo"s and "issimo"s); crescendo/decrescendo; accents high/low/medium; adagio, moderato, allegro, presto, prestissimo, etc.; staccato/legato; fermata; repeat sign. You'll need little individual signs with magnets that have those vocabulary words on them.
I got John Feirabend's echo song book (First Steps In Music - Book Of Echo Songs can be purchased from MusicK8.com) and found Candy Man (#1), which I can do in a pretty cool piano accompaniment.
Teach the song. It's an echo song - it won't take long! Then choose a child to pick one sign, define it and then we sing "Candy Man" how the song indicates. After a couple of instances, pick two children to pick signs and then sing it with both of those expressive characteristics. Then, making sure that the words are in their proper categories, have three kids come up and they pick one word per category (adagio, crescendo, high - for example) and *try* to sing it. If repeat or fermata is chosen, the child has to decide where the repeats and fermata will go!
Discuss the results - musicality, difficulty, etc.