It’s February half-term and a chance to reflect on the last six weeks with sessions on Winter and Lunar New Year at Bangers & Smash!
Check out School Outdoors Dulwich’s fab homemade bells!
Winter
January was cold and windy with plenty of scope for songs and activities based on Winter weather and keeping warm.
Children and staff enjoyed:
learning a new hello song – Bangers & Smash original, Colourful Clothes – and taking it in turns to sing about what they’re wearing
talking about warm Winter clothes
warming up their bodies with a chant about clapping, wiggling fingers and conducting the band
adding their own actions to the song, This Is The Way We Clap Our Hands
learning songs and rhymes about snow, including:
Three Little Snowflakes
Snowland
thinking about quiet and loud sounds and making their own snow music with:
body percussion
vocal sounds
bells
listening to two sets of jingle bells – one with lots of tiny bells (quiet) and the other with five larger bells (loud)
taking it in turn to hide the bells behind their backs before:
bringing out whichever set of bells the other children ask for – quiet or loud
choosing a set of bells to play behind their backs and asking the other children to guess which one it is – quiet or loud
dancing like snowflakes to Tchaikovsky’s Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker Suite
dancing in a circle to Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush
Being able to teach outdoors in some nurseries has been hugely beneficial for Bangers & Smash co-founder, Kitty Pidduck, as she moves towards pitching her animated preschool series to broadcasters at this year’s Children’s Media Conference (CMC).
Based on outdoor learning and messy play, the series is bursting with original songs about wildlife and the environment.
Kitty is also reaching out to other outdoor settings and is looking forward to attending a wild workshop/CPD day with Chris Holland at the end of February – Natural Musicians.
If you’d like to know more about Kitty’s preschool series, please check out https://kittypidduck.com!
Lunar New Year
The first two weeks of February brought celebrations in the form of Lunar New Year, which takes place in many East and South-East Asian countries, including China and Vietnam.
Children and staff enjoyed:
singing a hello song in Mandarin to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
learning how Chinese people greet each other during Lunar New Year – Gong Hei Fat Choy!
looking at Kitty’s Chinese opera hat and trying on conical bamboo hats from China and Vietnam
looking at a tiger puppet and learning about the Year of the Tiger
singing two tiger songs:
‘I’m Ticklish,’ Said The Tiger
Tiger, Tiger, Orange And Black
listening to a poem about a dragon – A Dragon’s Very Fierce – and adding in tambour, bamboo claves, tambourine, glockenspiel and handbells to create a performance
listening and galloping like horses to traditional Chinese music
Kitty brought in a selection of instruments and props, including a moon, a tiger and a silk scarf!
Music in the Wildlife Garden
And finally, Kitty and Bangers & Smash co-founder, Sarah Allen, will be presenting another of their popular singing and junk-instrument-making sessions in the Mother Goose Wildlife Garden on Saturday 26 March.
Sarah and Kitty at last September’s Music in the Wildlife Garden event
Music in the Wildlife Garden runs from 10am to 2pm and is a free, drop-in event for families and members of the local community.
It would be lovely to see you there!