Itsy Bitsy Spider

Kindergarten students learned about pitch this week.  We've been working on identifying the difference between our four voices: singing, whispering, talking and shouting (we use this one in class rarely when identifying it because not only can they damage their voice, but they have used it much on the playground and know it well).  Students have been doing several songs to help them hear how their voice can move up and down.

This week we did a dance to the song "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," then sang the song and finally played our first instrument all year (besides rhythm sticks) - the xylophone!  They were very excited.

We talked about the sizes of the bars, the different sounds the bars make (long bars have low sounds, short bars have high sounds) and how you can use a mallet to walk up the bars to make the sounds get higher or you can walk down the bars to make the sounds get lower.

Students played using mallets moving up and down the bars to the song.  Moving up when the spider moves up the water spout and moving down when the rain comes and washes him out.  And back up again.