One of my favorite songs to do with my students is "An Austrian Went Yodeling." This is an add-on song, otherwise known as a "cumulative" song. Each time we repeat the main part, we add on to make it a little bit longer. In this particular song, we sing about an Austrian who went yodeling on a mountain so high. He runs into various things, such as an avalanche, a person skiing, a milk-maid, a dog... and all these things interrupt his "cry" (his yodeling).
For Kindergarteners, this particular song is a more complicated melody, and it's a challenge to memorize all the add-ons. We also add an action each time, you see. And so singing and moving AND doing it all while keeping the beat we've set requires a lot of focus. With the 2nd graders, they've worked on that same focus, but they also independently realized the endless amount of ways we could be creative about what to add that could interrupt our yodeling Austrian.
Each class has done more than this song in class, of course, but this has been one they really have so much fun with. Kindergarteners are going to begin working a lot with reading different kinds of rhythms and playing them on various percussion instruments. 2nd Graders are going to be playing percussion, hand bells, and do some keyboarding while learning rhythm and then getting into note-reading. Because they are quickly developing their reading skills as well, the 2nd graders have begun using our class-set of hymnals to learn songs we can sing at Mass and for fun. The Kindergarteners do not use the hymnals yet, but they do learn about the elements they will need to recognize in order to use them. I have also been putting lyrics up on the board and talking about their meaning so that we can work on language while learning music.
On a final note, if you are looking for some real entertainment, go ahead and ask your kids to do some yodeling!
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