Carnival Time

Over the last four weeks, first grade students have been exploring musical elements such as pitch, dynamics, and tempo with Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. It is a 14 movement work, but we highlighted 7 movements to explore further. Each day we started off with a short excerpt from Barrie C. Turner's book that helped guide our ears toward the day's movement selections.

Each lesson we focused on a different musical element, beginning with a steady beat led by our puppet Roger, the Royal Lion. Now, Roger loves to dance but he only knows 3 moves: march a steady beat, roar on a glissando, and nod proudly on accented notes. 

For tempo, we met Pokey the Turtle to explain a slow tempo and lead us through mirror movement dances. Students followed Pokey's lead and then buddied up to lead each other through an improvised turtle dance. Be careful to not go too fast...you want Pokey to be able to dance too!

To contrast Pokey's slow movement, we met Jack the Mule. Mules aren't fast, you say? Well, Mr. Saint-Saens loved to play jokes and his carnival is one big joke! That's why the mules are fast. 

Story carpet time with Jack :)

For pitch, we met Ellie the Elephant and found out that she, like Pokey and Roger, loves to dance! Ellie dances a waltz with the double bass. A waltz is a dance in a meter of 3 so students learned how to conduct a meter of three and took turns wearing the elephant conductor hat to lead their class in a body percussion pattern of 3 (pat-clap-clap). 

Exploring a low pitch (double bass) with the Elephants! 

For our last element, we talked about texture. Does the music feel bumpy? Smooth? Gentle? Slimy? We chose the Kangaroos and Swan to represent bouncy and smooth textures, respectively. As you listen to the Kangaroos, you can hear them pause and look around for a new place to hop. These pauses gave us a fun opportunity to try out some directional movement and hop like kangaroos to different places around the room. Be careful to pause and look around when you hear the kangaroos do the same though!

The swans glide so gracefully across the water. We created our own ribbon dances to imitate their graceful movements and fill the room with beautiful colors. 

As a finale to all this fun, back in 1976 the San Fransisco Symphony teamed up with Warner Bros. and the Looney Tunes gang to have Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck present their own take of Mr. Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals. The whole production can be found in 3 parts on YouTube. 

(A HUGE shoutout to Sara Bibee for her tremendous guided unit! https://www.facebook.com/SaraBibeeMusic )