Carnival of the Animals Day 1

Introducing Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns

• Introduction and Royal March of the Lion
• Hens and Roosters
• Wild Asses: Swift Animals
• Tortoises
• The Elephant
• Kangaroos
• Aquarium
• Personages with Long Ears
• The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods
• Aviary
• Pianists
• Fossils
• The Swan
• Finale

I always looked forward to this unit each year.  It is an introduction to composition giving children an understanding that music can be used to describe something.  "From the beginning, Saint-Saëns regarded the work as a piece of fun." (Wiki-pedia)  I fully intended that this whole unit would be fun!

I wanted to start by getting the children excited about the music and to not only hear the music but see the instruments.  I chose to start with a video.  Choosing a good video that will engage the children is not always easy.  At the time I was teaching, the best one on the market was a DVD featuring Gary Burkoff.  You can find this one now on You Tube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uerDXMMGrS0

As I looked online today, I see there are several options.  I still like the Gary Burkoff version for its integration of live persons, animations, and the orchestration.

There are numerous versions on You Tube.  Feel free to use whichever form you like to introduce the music.  

FYI:  Everyone likes different pieces of music and children are no different.  With that in mind, it has been my experience that not all of these pieces will be entertaining to the children.  That does not mean that I did not use them.  However, it may not be necessary to play an entire piece of music to teach a certain concept. 

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Disney Productions included the Introduction in it's 2000 version of Fantasia.  This can be found on You Tube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poz9nZCFmb0

Another older version with the Ogden Nash poems is the Bugs Bunny version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUsZ-M09SMw

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If you prefer a book rather than video, then you might like this one.  The Carnival of the Animals (Book and CD) Hardcover by Jack Prelutsky  (Author) , Camille Saint-Saens (Creator) , Mary GrandPre (Illustrator)

Jack Prelutsky and Mary GrandPre have teamed up to create a winner.  America’s first Children's Poet Laureate has written all-new verses to accompany the composer Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals, and the illustrator of the Harry Potter books has turned these rollicking rhymes into a picture-book fun fest. Included is a CD of the music and of Jack Prelutsky reading the verses. A note to parents and teachers by Judith Bachleitner, head of the music department at the prestigious Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, suggests ways preschoolers can act out the music—tromp like an elephant, hop like a kangaroo, glide like a swan—or, for older children, be creatively inspired by this joyful work.

Carnival of the Animals Day 2

Today we want to make a connection between what the music actually does, how it sounds, and how it is played to the animals that it is describing.  So the children will each get a packet of cards that has a picture of each animal.  The cards will remind them of the animals in the music they listened to yesterday.

With very young children, you may want to have them choose two or three cards at a time so that there are not so many choices.  So let's say that you choose the turtle, the kangaroo, and the aquarium.  Take time before you listen to the music for each animal to predict what the music will do.  Which music will be the slowest? Which animal moves the slowest of all three?  Which moves the fastest?  Which music might sound like hopping?  What will the fish in the aquarium be doing?  What will that sound like?  Ask any questions you like to get their minds thinking.  Then as you play each piece of music, they will be able to identify the correct animal because they have already been predicting what it will sound like.

Do this same exercise with three more of the songs and cards.  Choose animals where the differences will be pretty obvious.

Now for the next set of cards, let the children ask the questions.  Choose three animals and invite them to ask you what to listen for.  They will be able to do that.

And then for the final group of pictures, ask the children to think their questions in their head and then to think the answers. You are teaching them strategies that they can use in many situations.

With older children you could easily do half of the cards with the questions and then end with them thinking their own questions and answers in their head before you play the last pieces of music.

It is a great exercise and will help them on Day 3 when you play the game called "I See It".

Here are the animal pictures - 4 to a page.  Print on cardstock and cut them out.  Laminate if they will be used often.

Remember how I said that Saint Saens was having fun when he wrote this music.  There are three pieces in particular that are actually funny and the kids can learn to recognize what this composer did.

1.  The Tortoise - the melody for the Tortoise is the Can Can - played very, very slowly.  Young children may or may not have heard the Can Can.  Here is a funny You Tube versions they would enjoy.  It's a wedding and the bride and guest are all dancing to the Can Can.  Just a minute will be enough for the kids.  Once they see the fun of the Can Can itself, they will laugh to think the Tortoise is doing this same music!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc4NoFZUZkA

2.  The Pianists - the piano plays some very beautiful music throughout the Carnival of the Animals.  But when this particular piece comes along, the pianists are practicing their scales!

3.  The Fossils - Now we need the sound of bones so the composer adds a xylophones.  Everyone who has ever done an animation for this piece has this being played on the bones of a skeleton!  Cute idea!

Carnival of the Animals Day 3

Today the children get to act out the animals as they hear the music.  Rather than just play the music and tell them to be a fish or a bird, etc, play the game called "I See It".

In order to play this game, the children will become the animal whose music they hear.  So you start playing say the Kangaroo's music.  The children listen and as soon as they know which animal it is, they become that animal and start moving around.  You should by now see kids hopping all over the room.  As soon as most of the children are doing the correct animal, you say "I See It" and they have to freeze right where they are until the next piece begins.  To reinforce their learning, say something like "Yes, I see kangaroos jumping all over the room!"

Do this with all of the pieces.  You may have to give a little assistance this first time - especially on the slow pieces which they may confuse.  You can play this often until you see them successfully identifying the pieces.

Here are some You Tube clips of the various pieces.  For this exercise we don't care what the graphics are. Remember you can use Free You Tube Downloader to download these pieces as mp3 files if you prefer to do that.  I personally like some of the You Tube videos for the kids.  The Fossils is a really good one!

• Royal March of the Lion  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL1M7v1lgYM
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• Hens and Roosters  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEd7Ovt4cWE
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• Tortoises  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPHqJTpgo-U
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• The Elephant  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1nVDoCnsNk
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• Kangaroos   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae_Obzv0XeI
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• Aquarium   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyFpZ5MZ7kk
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• Personages with Long Ears   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY8_G8cYi_Y
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• The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUsX9JwoI0
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• Aviary   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1PQRu_C5fQ
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• Pianists   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y1ntDP07rM
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• Fossils    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGI-hYVslPU
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• The Swan   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93GtiYmWlw
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Learning to Differentiate between Differing Musical Ideas.

Idea # 1 - March of the Toys (Babes in Toyland) - Victor Herbert. Boston Pops Orchestra / Arthur Fiedler  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFj4u-NJVYw

This piece is great fun because it is composed of lively marching music interspersed with fanfares.  Here is what I did with my kindergarten and first grade age kids.  I made several posters of villages - all story book type villages that belong in a make-believe world.  All the kids had to do was march around the villages but whenever a fanfare played they had to hurry and get to a village.  You could make it a game of sorts and if you're not at a village, you're out but I never did that.  The kids thought it was fun to just listen for the fanfare and run over to a village.  It's a simple exercise but helps to tune their musical ear.

Idea #2 - Yankee Doodle  - This is a song with a simple verse/refrain pattern.  (AB)  I chose it because it is so familiar.  There are a number of ways you might demonstrate form with this song.  A simple idea would be to march on the verse and then play a drum on the refrain - a drum being anything you can find that you can play in a drumming fashion if you don't own drums.  Or you can make up different actions for each section.  You might choose to march in a line (follow the leaders style) for the A section and then each person marches anywhere they want on the refrain.  Kids like to choose their own actions and be creative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHvyqNDUvE  with lyrics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H85-udAkFa0     Instrumental Fife and Drum skips refrain in the middle so you have to really listen to hear A and B.

Idea #3 - Jingle Bells - Another song with a simple verse/refrain pattern.  (AB)   I used to set up chairs around the room with jingle bells on them.  During the verse the kids were allowed to skip around the room but when the refrain began they had to sit on a chair and play their bells.  Again there is no right or wrong when it comes to the actions.  But there can only be two different movements - 1 for the A (verse) and the other for the B (refrain).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2MoS_YSAk    Lyrics on refrain sometimes -   sometimes only instrumental even on refrain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2MFducncsg   Only uses the 2 most common verses – short intro that repeats between verses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeNJmOsBS94     Karaoke style – short into that repeats between verses as in version above

Idea # 4 - Folk Dancing is all about form.  Simple folk dances for children have a pattern of repeated musical ideas.  There is a different movement for each musical idea.  Here are two familiar and popular dances for kids.  Each is in the simple AB form.  The ear is being trained to listen for the changes in the music.

Chicken Dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UV3kRV46Zs  Instructions for the chicken dance in case you don’t know how to do this dance - boring but instructive if you don't know the dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeXOBCBxl10  instrumental – the visual is just an excuse to play the music but that's okay because we just want the music. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWjeITmDmmo  Good version of the music but the silly chicken in the video doesn’t even match the music and he doesn’t do anything different on the B section.  But here is another good resource for the music.

La Raspa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq5c09ExG3o  Video that shows how to do the dance if you don't know this one or somehow missed out on it during your elementary school days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWPDw0gd1_o  Mariachi versions repeats 5 times with variations of the B

FORM CARDS

Musical Form - The Nutcracker

This is a lesson that I did with my 2nd graders.  Children that age love the Nutcracker Ballet by Tchaikovsky.  I used three pieces from the Nutcracker to introduce the children to the following musical terms: Introduction, A section, B section, Bridge, and Coda

Introduction:  an opening section of a piece.  I use simple language with small children.  We have sung so many songs by now that they know what an introduction is.  It is the music at the beginning of a piece of music that prepares you for the actually song or for the first musical idea.

A section:  the first musical idea that appears in a piece of music.

B section: the second musical idea that appears in a piece of music.

Bridge:   I teach the children that just as a bridge in the real world connects two pieces of land, a bridge in music connects two musical ideas.  A bridge in music always makes you feel like the music is taking you somewhere.

Coda:  a section of music that brings the piece to an end.

So here is the way I taught this lesson.  I would make cards with full size pieces of paper laminated to last with the words of these sections on them.  Then for each piece we listened to, I passed out the cards representing the parts of the music that the children would hear.  Their assignment was to listen and to come forward and stand under my hand if they thought they had the correct sign.

So imagine with me for a second here a very simple song, Twinkle Twinkle.  It is an ABA piece.  So for this song I would pass out 2 A cards and 1 B card.  Then as the music played I would hold up my hand high enough for a child to stand underneath of it when the A section began.  Hopefully a child with an A card would come stand under the hand.  I would then move to the sign and hold up my hand again just as the B section began.  Another child would come and stand under my hand.  And then repeated for the last section.

Now I ask everyone "Is this correct?"  If they all agreed we would listen again to be sure.  If they disagreed I would let me tell me what needs to change.  We would make those changes and then listen to see if they now had it right.  I never would tell them if they had it correct.  This lesson was always "explore and discover" until it was very obvious that the music matched the signs.

So here is the order and some links for the three pieces I used from the Nutcracker.  There is some variation in the pieces but I was teaching basics so didn't make an issue over any variation.

The Dance of the Reed Flutes:  Intro A~AB~A   (~ means bridge)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGwjHRfcsMQ

Chinese Dance:   Intro AABBAA Coda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3kdY2vMO0w&feature=fvsr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeMIzUJSpsA    (Fantasia version)

Russian Dance (Trepak):  AAAABB~AA Coda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzSGBGWO3r4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceKPQEV9wH8    (Fantasia version)