Toys Lesson 4

Wooohooooo......boy, was I impressed with the home made musical instruments your kids brought to class! Some of you spent a lot of time making it and I am deeply aprreciative of your efforts. The kids were so proud to show their instruments and they even got to share and take turns playing with the instruments their friends brought to class. Hopefully I will be able to put up a few pictures of the instruments the kids made and you can see for yourself. One of the kid even named his instrument. Bravo!

This week we are going to use the our bodies to play a steady beat to the Hello song. Can we pat our knees to a steady beat? Can we alternate patting knees and clapping hands to a steady beat? How about patting knees, clapping hands and touching heads? In this activity, we are promoting not only development of steady beat but also a practice in sequencing.

How can we go to the Toy Shop this week? With our rhythm sticks, we can walk, run, jump and roll....and even row boats and drive cars with horns. There are a myriad of ways in which we can use the rhythm sticks as instruments for pretend and imaginative play. I won't be surprise if the kids give me even more suggestions during class time!

In the Toy Shop this week, we will have to use our EARS to listen to the toys we have. Can it be a toy frog ( using a guiro) or maybe a toy clock ( metronome). We might even find a toy bike and a toy train! Maybe even the doundoun drum or the pow wow drum....one never know what exciting discovery we have in our toy shop. If we 'open' our ears, we will hear lots of interesting sounds.....

We ran out of time to the I am a top activity so we will do it this week. I know the kids have been asking to do this as they had so much fun the last time winding up the tops and seeing it spin and spin....This week, we are all going to be spinning tops and I'll get to 'wind' up the kids with my special magic key!

We continue our lesson about different types of drums from different countries. Last week, we played and learned about the chinese drum. This week, we will get to play with Mr Snare Drum....I know the kids will be terribly excited at the sound this drum can make and we are going to have a terrific time marching with the drum!

We will play our drums to Al Tambor. This week, we will only use the drums. This activity promotes listening to various sections in a song, steady beat and exploring different ways to play the drums.

Lastly, we will have another circle dance....the surprise activity awaits you when you come to class!