We’ve had an excellent end to the Summer term at Bangers & Smash this June and July with six sessions on finding the groove!
Thinking about our work on keeping the pulse and feeling the rhythm in April and May, we’ve brought the two together to try out simple repeating rhythms over a steady pulse.
We’ve started each session by naming children one by one around the circle as part of our regular hello song. Kitty has asked each child to break the sound of their name into separate syllables and to clap once for each syllable (Kay-lee, Jon-a-than, A-bu-ba-kar etc). This task is all about physicalising sound and is complex because it involves matching action to speech.
As the children have become more familiar with the task, Kitty has extended it by asking them to add in an extra phrase – ‘cha, cha, cha’ – after their names (‘Meg-an cha cha cha’ etc). This grounds the task in 4/4 time and leads – with lots of practice – to the children being able to say their names and the 'cha cha cha' phrase one after the other without gaps. This is an important development because it creates a piece of simple percussive music – word rhythms spoken and clapped over a shared pulse that is ‘felt’ rather than played.
Moving on, Kitty has introduced an ocean drum and invited individual children to the front to play it. We’ve looked at the back of the drum, which has a picture of sea creatures on it, and Kitty has taught the children a song about a little crab.
Using a piece of blue cloth to represent the sea, we’ve then sung a number of sea-based songs including:
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
A Sailor Went To Sea, Sea, Sea
Bobby Shaftoe
Down There Under The Sea
In this last song, the children have bounced different sea creatures on the cloth and Kitty has asked them to find short phrases to describe the creatures and to play these phrases on claves (‘scary shark’, ‘tiny octopus’ etc). Kitty has introduced a slow, steady pulse by repeating the word, ‘whale’, and the children have practised playing their phrases over this pulse. With some groups, it’s been possible to take this one step further by splitting the children into two sections with one half playing the phrases and the other half playing the pulse.
The children have also learned Baby Beluga by Canadian children’s songwriter, Raffi, and this has proved to be immensely popular – with teachers reporting hearing children singing it around the nursery and in the garden.
Other activities have included:
singing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 while counting laminated fish
making a (pretend) fish stew and eating it while singing and swaying to You Shall Have A Fishy On A Little Dishy
creating a circle dance to The Big Ship Sailed On The Alley, Alley Oh
We’ve finished each session with some dancing and Kitty has chosen two very different songs, both with distinctive grooves:
Nautilus by B Bumble and the Stingers
Dancing With The Captain by Paul Nicholas
In the first, children have looked at a picture of a nautilus and used their hands and bodies to create tentacles and big eyes staring out of a shell as they move along the ocean bed. In the second, children and staff have performed jaunty nautical actions and had fun disco-dancing!
New nursery for Bangers & Smash
In other news, Bangers & Smash was delighted to run a taster session for Under the Willow Nursery in Dulwich in May. Following this, Kitty was asked to provide musical support for the nursery's upcoming performance for parents in June, rehearsing a selection of songs about Australia, including:
I’m A Kangaroo
El Senor Koala
Dig Like A Wombat
Once There Was A Lizard
I Had A Little Turtle
Baby Shark
The performance was a great success with Head of Nursery, Mandy, commenting, 'We have lots of happy parents and the children are still singing this morning! Your input was so much appreciated and we are looking forward to building this relationship.'
We are delighted to welcome Under the Willow to our roster and looking forward to starting regular music sessions at the nursery next term.
Summer break
Bangers & Smash is now taking a break and music sessions will start again in September. We hope you have a wonderful Summer and wish all the children moving on to ‘big school’ the best of luck – we’ll miss you very much!