Submitted by Carol Gibson, St. Peters, Missouri
Idea posted September 10, 2002
To begin school this year, I used "¡Hola, Amigos!" (from Music K-8, Vol. 12, No. 1) as one of my opening activities. Because I teach only K, 1, and 2, I found this song and following activity very useful, and my students loved it!
First, I recorded the song on a cassette tape repeatedly five times. This helped the final movement we did. After I introduced and translated the two-word Spanish lyrics ("hola" and "amigos"), I played the tape (one time) and asked the students to count how may times they heard "amigos." (4) When I played it again, I asked them to clap on the word "amigos." We repeated this clap to master this skill. Then, we patted our knees on the beat through the whole song, but for the word "amigos," which still was clapped. We repeated this to master it, also. Finally, we transferred the body percussion to our feet. After forming a walking circle, I began the cassette tape mentioned above, and we walked forward to the beat until we reached "amigos." On that word, we stepped back. Because the lyrics are patterned slightly different, the kids had a blast! I added a hand drum that I played on "amigos" to help them know when to step backwards. Between each repeat of the song, we froze in place.
This was a great activity for my primary classrooms during the first few days of school.