During these final weeks of October, I often sing a song/nursery rhyme that I fondly recall from my childhood. It can be a useful tool for teaching the younger groups like the Apples, Lilypads, Watermelons, Crayons and Legos the difference between fiction/make-believe and reality. Around Halloween, our children are inundated with scary images of skeletons, witches, zombies, spiders on a daily basis.
I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly—is a children's rhyme and song known as a cumulative song. It tells the story of an old woman who swallowed increasingly large animals, each to catch the previously swallowed animal. As I sing the song, I ask the children if this can really happen, where a human being can swallow all these animals and have them run around in your stomach and chase each other. We realize that it is silly/can't happen and that the absurd ideas in the song are for fun only, just like how some people dress up in costumes for Halloween or like to hear scary stories this time of year. I let them know that if they get overwhelmed on Halloween night, to remember that is just people pretending to be monsters and if you get scared, you can take a break from it all. The older classes also have been singing and studying songs that represent emblems or symbols of our country: "The Star-Spangled Banner, You're a Grand Old Flag, My Country 'Tis of Thee, Hail to the Chief (President) and Hail Columbia (Vice President).
Most of the older classes such as the Otters, Clouds, Battleships, Pumpkins and Astronauts are learning about the government. I found this website called "Flocabulary" https://www.flocabulary.com/ that creates Educational Hip Hop songs. We've been listening to "The Presidential Election Process" and noticing how this particular style/genre of music uses rhymes and "near rhymes" to create a song. We also discuss the instrumentation that is used and the repetitive chorus. |
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