Autumn fun with Bangers & Smash!

It’s been a busy Autumn at Bangers & Smash with sessions on Trees, Trees in Africa and the Caribbean, Minibeasts and Animals on Land!

If you’re ever in the forest, the forest, the forest, if you’re ever in the forest, you’ll see lots of trees!

Regular nurseries and outdoor settings

Trees

At Crystal Nurseries, School Outdoors Dulwich and Mother Goose Greendale, we spent September thinking about trees and wooden sounds.

Children and staff enjoyed:

  • listening to the sound of leaves and learning a hand rhyme, Five Little Leaves

  • passing a toy tree round the circle and finding words to describe how it feels:

    • prickly

    • spiky

    • tickly

  • looking at a silver nutmeg and a golden pear while singing I Had A Little Nut Tree

  • looking at a picture of a tree and finding the roots, trunk, branches and leaves

  • singing The Parts Of Trees (to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes) and pretending to grow into trees

  • looking at pictures of different trees and identifying them (e.g. oak, sycamore, pine, holly)

  • singing If You’re Ever In The Forest (to the tune of Did You Ever See A Lassie?) while tapping and rubbing claves together like branches

  • making the sound of the wind and swaying from side to side

  • tapping claves in time with Kitty’s poem, I Like Trees

  • tapping the names of fruits and nuts on trees, logs, benches and tables

  • looking at a homemade tree made from an egg box, a cardboard tube and a branch

Kitty’s homemade tree

If you’d like to know more, please check out Kitty’s blog posts, Poems upon the sky and The woods are never solitary.

Trees in Africa and the Caribbean

October is Black History Month and Kitty introduced songs and activities based on trees in Africa and the Caribbean.

Children and staff enjoyed:

  • looking at pictures of baobab trees and singing Under The Baobab Tree by Iya and the Kuumba Kids

  • looking at a picture of a banana tree and singing Yellow Bird

  • screeching and flapping their wings like parrots

  • looking at pictures of ackee fruit and singing Linstead Market

  • looking at the book, Handa’s Surprise, and clapping the names of tropical fruit

In addition, Kitty asked staff of African and Caribbean heritage if they would like to share songs and stories from their heritages.

Huge thanks to Abina, Kemi, Caroline, Gay-Ann, Trishana and Vinette for sharing songs from Ghana, Nigeria and Jamaica and to Fatima for her story about a baobab tree.

If you’d like to know more, please check out Kitty’s blog post, Under the Baobab Tree.

Under the Willow

Meanwhile at Under the Willow, Kitty was able to support the nursery’s monthly themes with sessions on Minibeasts in September and Animals on Land in October.

Minibeasts

Children and staff enjoyed:

  • dancing to There Ain’t No Bugs On Me by David Holt

  • singing an action song, There’s A Tiny Caterpillar On A Leaf (to the tune of She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain)

  • dancing like butterflies to Ballybrolly Jigs by Bangers & Smash co-founder, Sarah Allen’s band, Flook

  • making their hands into a (pretend) beehive and singing Here Is The Beehive

  • learning Kitty’s poem, I Like The Bee, about how bees collect nectar and make honey

  • singing A Worm Is Very Wiggly and making up their own actions for different minibeasts

  • looking at a picture of ants and singing The Ants Went Marching

  • singing two action songs about spiders:

    • Incey Wincey Spider

    • There’s A Spider On The Floor

  • pretending to be stuck in a web and dancing to Sticky Situation by Kiko Bun

  • playing sticks and pretend trumpets to The Ladybugs’ Picnic

Animals on Land

Children and staff enjoyed:

  • thinking about animals that are big and small and wondering what they might sound like while:

    • looking at a toy elephant and mimicking the sound of an elephant trumpeting

    • looking at a toy mouse and pretending to squeak and eat cheese

    • wondering whether each animal’s sound is loud or quiet and how that relates to their size

  • learning a poem, An Elephant Goes Like This & That

  • singing One Big Elephant, One Tiny Mouse then adding in a dinosaur and an ant

  • singing an action song, Way Down In The Jungle, led by Fatma

  • looking at a toy monkey and lion and singing Monkey, Monkey, Up The Tree and Here’s A Great Big Lion

  • dancing to Kitty’s song, Monkeys Are Clever

We also started rehearsals for Under the Willow’s and School Outdoors Dulwich’s Autumn Project Celebrations, which take place on Thursday 25 November!

Autumn activities with Bangers & Smash

In other news, Kitty and Sarah hosted another Music in the Wildlife Garden event at Mother Goose Wildlife Garden on 25 September.

We sang songs from Kitty’s musical series for 4-6-year-olds (currently in development with KingBee Animation) and made junk drums and claves with families and members of the local community.

If you’d like to know more, please check out Kitty’s blog post, Music in the Wildlife Garden.

How about that for an impressive drum?!

Kitty also ran a taster session for Sowing & Growing Nursery & Preschool in West Norwood on Tuesday 19 October. Babies, toddlers and preschoolers sang songs about trees in the UK, Africa and the Caribbean and danced like leaves to Calico by Flook.

And finally, if you’d like to book your own music session(s) with Bangers & Smash, please get in touch here!