Blog Posts

Halloween and October Fun

Denise Gagne

Halloween was my kids and now my grandkids favorite holiday of the year. However, not all families celebrate Halloween. How can you enjoy the Halloween spirit without excluding any of your students?

In Musicplay K-6, options are given for many songs that allow all to participate. For example, in Musicplay 2, Pass the Witch's broom is a favourite song. If you have students who don't sing about witches, the suggestion given is to sing "pass the kitchen broom" instead. This is a favorite game of all students - Grades 1-5! A teacher on the Musicplay Teachers Facebook page had a suggestion for your younger students who feel really bad when they go out. She suggested that when they were out, they got to go "fly" around the circle on the broom before sitting down. With your older students, when a number of students are "out" there can be big gaps in the circle. Then the students who are still passing have to toss the stick to the next student --- and if it drops they lose their turn.

If you don't have Musicplay 2, you can download this song on iTunes - search for Pass the Witch's broom Denise Gagne.

Pass the Witches Broomstick Notation

Game Directions: Sing the song. As you sing, pass a rhythm stick or a broom around the circle. If you are using the CD, the teacher should press pause. The child holding the stick at that point goes out. When there are large gaps in the circle, don’t let the children move their feet to pass the broom - make them toss it to each other. This makes the game challenging, even for your upper elementary students.

Musical concepts:

Read the rhythms - uses just ta, ti-ti, too-oo.
- If you've introduced the half note in Grade 2, this is a good song to practice your new rhythm
- use to show melodic contour

Another favourite Halloween/non-Halloween song is Bats from Musicplay 4 (also in Sing and Play on Special Days). It's in a minor key, but the song is just about bats. There's no mention of ghosts or witches. It's actually a really good teaching piece about bats. The kids love letting the air out of balloons to make the squeaky noises in the song (eee ee ee). You can use recorded accompaniment, or have the students accompany themselves with Orff instruments. The Orff arrangement is found in The Orff Source. You can download the Orff Source here!

Bats Notation

Musical Concepts:

Create accompaniment with Orff instruments
- create sound effects with balloons
- improvise 16 beat melodies in E pentatonic between repetitions of the verse. If you don't have enough instruments for all your students, you could have 1/2 the class improvise movement, while the other 1/2 improvises melodies.