Snowmen in Kindergarten

As I sort of thought, the weather is......pretty much back to the normal low of 40's and high of mid 60's. Did you think I would say it was snowing? If you did, I bet you've never been here. :)

But it doesn't prevent us from continuing on with the snow theme in the music room. This Kindergarten favorite is one that I actually learned from my son about 6 years ago! Talk about the true oral tradition living on.....he learned it in his preschool class for their winter performance and came home excited to tell it to me. I hadn't actually heard it before and it was just too cute! (Anything from a 4 year-old is though!! Well, almost anything.)

I made this as a picture book (before I got my projector), we act it out, I have made masks (which I sell in my Etsy store), we do it as just the fingerplay.....whatever feels right. I did add one thing that makes it a great vocal practice for Kinder especially.....after each snowman melts, we say "OOOOoooooooo" in a high-low sliding voice and we "melt" down to the ground (or use our hands if we are seated) to reinforce high to low. That gives us a moment to pause and think about how many are left and they are usually very eager to tell you how many the answer. (I always play innocent, though there are some days I truly can't remember which one we left off on......) 

The Powerpoint is animated to melt each snowman if you're not too click-happy and I've checked it a million times.....hopefully everything saved properly.

Five Little Snowmen PowerPoint Show

I was hoping to add in one more thing that I shared around this time last year, but the website is changing up. I found the book Snowmen at Night on a great online website called "We Give Books" but it does not seem to the there anymore. So instead, here's a link to it on Amazon and what the cover looks like:

This book is great for movement! These crazy snowmen go on an adventure all over town, sliding and gliding around.....perfect for the kids imitate. It's a delightful story. And I can't leave this post without mentioning Frosty! I love this book version:

What are your favorite snowman activities in the music room? What can you think of for the older grade levels?

Snail, snail....I mean, Snowflake snowflake!

As you can see, I'm trying to make up for all the blogging that I haven't done over the last few months and I'm on a roll! This is a perfect activity for these winter months and it's a familiar melody to the little ones.

I learned Snowflake, Snowflake a long time ago and I'm trying to remember who taught it to me! I'm going to have to ask a few friends from my Kodály levels if they remember learning this song from one of our teachers or if I learned it from a colleague. I will update if I get some answers. (I did Level I in 2001 where I probably would have learned this song, so my memory is fuzzy. I don't have a master copy either so it must have just been one of those songs learned in a lesson. Maybe someone made it up. Again, I'll have to ask around!)

The lyrics and solfa are on the slides in the activity, but basically, it's the same melody and rhythm as Snail, Snail with these words:

It's simple, but fun and catchy and the kids love this one! We play a movement game of sorts where we float and drift around like lovely, gentle snowflakes....at the end, of course, we freeze! The most frozen snowflake gets to come to the front and choose the next frozen snowflake and then go back into the game. There's no elimination....it's just fun movement and singing. We don't usually sing it very fast....maybe that's because I'm used to soft, gentle snowfall here in Texas. :) Though I will admit, if I feel like a particular class can handle it, we will have a blizzard in the forecast and sing faster for a different tempo practice. Usually the blizzard passes over pretty quickly though.

If you have a projector but not a SmartBoard, this one is especially for you. I chose PowerPoint for this activity because of the animations and action settings that I needed to use....Google Slides just doesn't have the options I needed. I have basically set it up to give an assessment for reading la, so and mi on the staff and it won't advance until they get the answer (out of three options) correct.

So head over to the link below and download it! I put the activity directions and leading questions in the slide notes at the bottom. If you read over those and then press Play to practice it, I think it'll be pretty clear. I don't write all directions directly on my slides because I don't want to just read from the screen. :)

Snowflake, Snowflake Activity Link