Grinding Corn

Well, it's November (well, tomorrow is November) and Thanksgiving is just three weeks away!!! I can't believe it!!!

Here is one of my all-time favorite songs to do at this time of year. I learned the version from Cindy McCaskill (it's my favorite) but I've heard other versions of it:

I use this song to talk with my 1st graders about how different things were at the first Thanksgiving: they had no electricity (No T.V.?!!! No computers?!!!), no cars, no streets, etc. And everyone was expected to "pitch in" and help with chores. I actually have real stones that I use for this song and they keep a steady beat while pretending to "grind" corn. . . and we bring in real corn so they can see all the different colors of corn.

I have created a PowerPoint that I use for this song and we use various slides from it, depending on what we are preparing or practicing in that specific grade level.

In first grade, we use the following slides to read and keep the beat to the song:

I bring this song back in 2nd and 3rd grade as a familiar song from which they will read and practice or prepare new rhythmic and melodic elements.

In 2nd grade, we are practicing half note so we read the song and practice the rhythms from these slides:

We then replace the iconic rhythm with symbolic notes:

And finally we replace the tied quarter notes with notated half notes:

In 3rd grade, we are prepating la,. We will read the song from the following slides. We draw attention to the unknown note and it's critical attributes: that it is lower then do and it's a skip below do: