Big Bunch of Roses

Now, this is a song that I had sitting in my pile of "too be looked at in greater detail" pile for years.  I couldn't figure out how to "own" the song and in turn "sell it" to my students.  Then last year at Leigh Anne Garner's ROCKE workshop I learned some activities to do with it.

Here's the song:

Here's an easy Orff accompaniment that I made up (again, I have no Orff training, so all my "stuff" is quite simple):

Now, Leigh Anne presented a passing song using plush roses.  Last year I found these online:

They were quite the buy and they can in five different colors (red, pink, orange, blue, purple), which worked out nicely for the game that Leigh Anne taught us.   (I'm sad to report that the roses I found are no longer available.  But with Valentine's day around the corner keep your eye out when your shopping, you never know what you might find!)

Here are my kiddos singing and playing the passing game.  Sitting in a circle, every student had a rose and passed the roses to the right on the beat of the song (pass, pick-up, pass, pick-up, etc.)  When Leigh Anne taught is she didn't have a rose for everybody, so that's another way to play it.  When you didn't have a rose you kept the pattern going with your arms and when the rose was in front of you you passed it.

Here's a PowerPoint that I made for the song.  There's a lyric slide:

Melodic preparation slides:

Melodic prep on the staff:

Melodic practice slides (sans rhythm):

Melodic practice on the staff:

 Rhythm preparation slides, students must figure out where to add ties:

Rhythmic preparation slides, with ties:

Rhythm practice slides:

Rhythmic and melodic practice slides, with stick notation:

Rhythmic and melodic practice slides, staff notation:

Absolute pitch reading practice slides:

And a song sorting game:

Going back to the plush rose passing game, I use the colors of the roses to group my students and I have the above cards printed on matching paper.  That is, I have red cards, pink cards, orange cards, blue cards & purple cards.  Everyone with like colored roses work together to find the cards that they need to put the song in order.  If you notice, the first 4 cards match the song, the second 4 do not match the song.  This is to "up the ante" and make the game harder.  So to simplify the game, you could print out only the top four cards.  

This PowerPoint is available at my Teachers pay Teachers store for $1.00.  Please follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers, beginning in February I will be starting a monthly freebie, for followers only.