Lynn Kleiner's Music Box
Wow, what a Pre-K music week I had! After 6 rehearsals with delightful 2-5 year old preschool concerts, I had assemblies at a school district for their Pre-K and K classes.
For the assemblies (I call this Music for the Masses), I used the Five Little Monkeys activity from Jungle Beat. Here’s the process.
First I asked them to tap the beat while I sang the first verse.
Then I asked them to sing and tap with me.
Next we added a clap on the quiet beat at the end of the phrase.
Then I called one child up for the Lynn and ________ show. (Fill in the child’s name). I explained we would tap the beat while singing and then put both our hands out to clap both hands with our partner, instead of just clapping our own hands.
Then we tremolo (tap very quickly) on our legs from soft to loud for “Along comes Mr. Crocodile…..” (I introduce the word crescendo.) Then hit with my partner for SNAP!
All this leads to me and the child choosing a new partner so now 4 are up in front of the masses doing this for the next verses. Now they choose partners, so we have 8 (4 pairs) children up, etc. Finally, I have most children, even if they have not been picked yet, doing this with a partner.
Partner work is so much fun for this age and placing a hand drum or tambourine in the middle for both to play allowed them to all play an instrument (since I did not have enough for EIGHTY 4 and 5 year olds! HA!) is exciting. They keep the beat on the drum and they play the tremolo from soft to loud for the Crocodile. They clap with their partner on the quiet beats at the end of the phrases and for SNAP!
For the big finale, perform the entire song using the recording from the Jungle Beat CD. They love that recording and we pretended to play piano between the verses. The most exciting part is starting super soft with a tremolo since that crocodile is so quiet and sneaky!
