Valentine, Red and Blue

This song reminds me of my first year of teaching.  I remember my mom going to Lamar Robertson's workshop in Colorado (I was teaching in Salem, OR at the time) and telling me about how great his workshop was.  This was the winter before I took level I Kodály at Portland State University.  I did a passing game with it in which the students passed a heart pillow that I had growing up and if they had it at the end of the song they took a card out of the inside of the pillow and read the rhythm.  This is a great song and my source for it is "The American Methodology" by Lamar Robertson and Ann Eisen. 

Here's the song:

This song is a great one to practice re but you can also isolate the first phrase to work on do.  I typically use this with my second graders but will be using it for an absolute pitch game with my third graders (see the end of the blog).

Here are some of the slides from my PowerPoint:

Lyric slide:

Beat practice:

 Rhythm prep (note the half note at the end):

Rhythm reading slide:

Stick notation with bar lines:

Stick solfa practice (my second graders won't be doing this as we haven't gotten to re yet):

The PowerPoint also goes through the song with text and hearts in relationship to pitch:

Then the same thing again, but with solfége (remember I tailor my PowerPoint's to my students needs):

And then it's put on the staff with words:

And it's put on the staff with solfége:

And here they'll be reading the rhythm and solfége off the staff:

And remember I told you a while ago that reading in absolute pitch was something I was trying to have my kids do more often?  Well, here are some absolute pitch reading cards.  If your kiddos are playing recorder, this could be accessible to them if you've gotten to high D:

Here's the song sort that I'm going to be using this year with my kiddos.  You could do it with first grade with the pink and blue hearts only.  You could use it with your second graders if you've gotten to re and you using the green, blue and pink hearts.  And for your third graders, you can use all the hearts.

Basically, you can use this how ever you want to.  If you gave each of your kiddos all four of the purple hearts (the absolute pitch cards), they would put the song in order.  You can extend that and have them match the solfége (the green hearts) to the purple hearts.  You can tailor it for your students needs and what ever your assessment might be.

Remember those hearts that I found at The Dollar Tree?  You could also use that with this song as an assessment- have them write out the melody on the staff paper using the Table Scatter hearts.  The possibilities are endless!!  Please share some of your ideas with me!

If you'd like this PowerPoint and Song Sort, you can find it at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

I hope you all had a GREAT Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!