What a fabulous May it's been at Bangers & Smash with plenty of sunshine bringing the minibeasts out in force!
Photo © Kitty Pidduck / Bangers & Smash
We've started our sessions with a song we learned last month: Fingers All. This was one of the first songs Kitty and Sarah wrote together and it's wonderful to think we're still using it 30 years on! With lyrics about everything from cats and centipedes to toothbrushes and helicopters, the song encourages the children to work on their fine and gross motor skills by making small and large movements with their fingers, hands and arms as they sing.
We've gone on to learn two songs about spiders: Incey Wincey Spider and There's A Spider On The Floor. Kitty has walked a toy tarantula up the children's bodies and onto their heads and they have enjoyed squealing and giggling at the feel of the spider's legs in their hair!
Next, we've chosen individual children to lie in the middle or at the front, wrapped in colourful woven scarves from South America. Our song, A Caterpillar Crawled To The Top Of A Tree, sees the children first sleeping, then hatching into butterflies and and finally spreading their wings and flying.
We've followed this by throwing brightly coloured silk scarves into the air and catching them. The children have had fun choosing two scarves each as butterfly wings. Kitty has commented on each child's choice e.g. 'Izzy is a green and purple butterfly', 'Jamie is a yellow and orange butterfly' etc. We've then paraded round in a circle fluttering like butterflies to Bangers & Smash original, Flutter By.
Each session has finished with The Ladybugs' Picnic, a catchy song in which the children count up to 12 in sets of three:
'1 2 3... 4 5 6... 7 8 9... 10 11 12
The ladybugs came to the ladybugs' picnic'
Kitty has used the song to introduce two sounds – tapping and tooting. The children have tapped using claves during the verses and tooted using empty cardboard tubes during the middle 'solo' section. After much repetition, the children have been able to remember when to play sticks and when to play 'trumpets'. It's been amazing watching them gain vocal confidence through whispering, shouting, speaking and singing into their tubes and great to see them pick up a simple AABA (verse/verse/solo section/verse) arrangement.