Month: May 2021

Truth be told, I don’t like bugs very much.  But I do appreciate their place in this world  —how important they are.    I remember this sometimes when I meet others I don’t like much.

The featured songs may be used to teach music, but they are also a good tool for teaching science  (ecosystems, biodiversity, animal groups, botany);  visual arts (looking for shapes to aid drawing, perspective, colour mixing); language arts (composition, storytelling, point of view) and social studies (ways people around the world incorporate bugs into economics).    In any of these subjects, hooking ideas to a song will make stronger connections between ideas in the brain, and easier recall of facts and questions.

Other “bug” songs in Can Do Music:                                                      Little Arabella;    The Internetting Spider;     Ladybug, Ladybug;  Baby Bumblebee (two versions);    Bee Bee, Bumblebee;

and for Active Listening:  The Flight of the Bumblebee

Other “bug” resources:    word card set

Have fun!

 

 

If I were teaching this month, and not confined to a curriculum, I would let usual expectations go and concentrate on music fun.  We’re all becoming screen weary, or mesmerized (which is worse?)    Let fun in music lighten the load for all of us.   Learning will happen.

Mothers come in all languages  … check out  “Los Pollitos“.   Challenge students to create and photograph a “stuffed animal” family.    How does the mother call her “chicks”?    Explore what chicks say in different languages   e.g.   peep,  pio,  piou.   What are the onomatopoeias for animal sounds in Asian countries?   Music is a language in itself, and also comes from the languages we learn.

And, just because  I learned “Los Pollitos”  in Ecuador,  try “Juanito” to get the jiggles out,  or  “La Cucaracha”  (a very old folk song used to parody political events in Mexico and Spain).

 

“Who Shall I Be Kind To?” is answered in this song based on a middle-Eastern moral story.    Its a question well worth exploring.