Blog Posts

Moms are Special

Denise Gagne

Easter and Mother's Day are closer together this year than I can ever remember. This lesson is from Musicplay for Kindergarten, but you can teach the song to Grade 1-2 as well.

Moms are Special Notation 2. My mom cooks me lots of food … (3x) because she loves me so. (this group wears aprons and stirs pots and pans)
3. My mom tucks me in at night … (3x) because she loves me so. (this group has blankets that they pull up to their chins)
4. My mom reads me lots of books. … (3x) because she loves me so. (This group has books that they hold up)
5. Mom’s are special, Mom’s are nice because they loves us so.

Teaching Process/Suggested Activities:

Suggested Grades K-3

Target Concepts

Songs can express our feelings
Create new verses

Materials

Song, given above

Teaching Process/Suggested Activities:

Listen to the song. Ask the children how the song makes them feel. Discuss with the children some of things that their moms do for them. Ask them how they feel if their Mom tucks them in at night. Tell them that sometimes songs are a good way to tell someone how you feel.

Teach the song by rote. Invite the children to create movements that reflect the words of the song.

If you are using this song in performance you could divide the class into three groups and have each group sing one verse alone. The first and last verse would be sung by the entire class. Verse two, three and four would be sung by groups with costumes and props as suggested above.

Invite the children to create new verses for the song that tell about some of the special things that their mom does for them.

Curriculum Connections Extensions

Big Books of songs are a wonderful tool to engage children in learning the lyrics and for helping them to understand the meaning of the text. However, Big Books can be expensive, and they aren’t always available for the songs that you’d like to teach. Creating your own Big Book with student illustrations is a wonderful alternative that integrates art, music, and language arts. To make your own Big Book, choose a song with lyrics that can be illustrated. Type one or two lines of lyrics onto each page. (Please remember that you can do this only with traditional songs - the lyrics of composed songs are covered by copyright laws, so you must get the author’s permission before doing this!)

Give each child one page to illustrate. If you have more children than pages, make more than one book. If you have more pages than children, give some of the children who finish their work quickly, more than one page to illustrate. If you would like, you could have students illustrate the entire book and give it to Mom for Mother’s Day.

Sometimes children can create their own lyrics for a song. In the Big Book for “Moms are Special” I’ve added one page in which children can create their own lyrics for the song. It is at the end of the book, but you can insert it wherever you feel it fits.

Bind the books. An easy way to bind class books is to use a comb binding machine. If you don’t have a comb binder in your school, punch holes along the sides and insert the pages into a duotang. Print the cover page and tape or glue the cover page to the front of the duotang.

If you would like to have your Big Books larger than 8.5x11, take the pages to a photocopier and enlarge them to 11x17 paper. 11x17 paper fits very nicely on a music stand, especially if you set up your pages using the “Landscape” format.

If students make a Big Book of a song that they know well, they will be able to “read” the song, even if they aren’t actually reading, just by decoding the pictures. Copy and send the class books home with your students for home reading practice.

If you are going to perform a song, enhance your performance by scanning student illustrations, inserting them into a powerpoint and projecting the illustrations as the students sing. This would work very nicely with this book and a Mother’s day.