I love finding upbeat, school-appropriate, modern songs to use in my music classes for dance parties, slideshows, field day, and general merriment, and these last few years it has felt especially important to share with all the stress and negativity we're all dealing with. Here are my new picks for this year- be sure to check out my posts from previous years to find more awesome music my students and I love linked at the end of this post!
I lost track of time so I'm putting this out a little later than I normally do- hopefully it's not too late for you to use it in all of your end of the school year fun! Don't miss the playlist at the end of this post that includes these songs plus all of my picks from previous years' playlists (this is year 9 of me putting these together, so there are a lot)!
To make it easier to find all my dance party playlist songs in one place, I've put together a YouTube playlist with all of the songs from all of my previous year's lists including this one! Here's the link to the playlist.
If you've missed my playlists from previous years you can see those posts below! Happy dancing :)
I'm so excited to add this Ukrainian song to my collection of songs about rain from around the world, and this one has some musical elements that are part of both my younger and older grades' curriculum, so it will work well with a wide range of ages!
The title of this Ukrainian song is Дощик, which translates to "Rain". Fits right in with the rain theme! Actually I found a couple of fairly widespread Ukrainian rain songs, and both of them use the same onomatopoeia word for the sound of the rain that is quite fun to sing. In the verses of this song you'll hear the word of every line:
I love using songs in different languages that have a repeated word or phrase that is quick and easy for students to learn without knowing the language, so this song definitely fits the bill. After we listen to it one time, I ask students to tell me what the Ukrainian word is for the sound of raindrops and they can immediately identify the sound! Then I play the recording again and have students sing along with just that word. Here are the lyrics for the first verse:
Дощик ллється цілий ранок - кап-кап-кап!It's been raining all morning, kap-kap-kap!
Не виходимо на ґанок - кап-кап-кап. Let's not go out on the porch, kap-kap-kap!
Раптом бачим під кущемSuddenly we see under the bush,
кап-кап-кап-кап-кап!kap-kap-kap-kap-kap!
Мокне зайчик під дощем The bunny gets wet in the rain,
кап-кап-кап-кап-кап! kap-kap-kap-kap-kap!
Once we've sung through the song, singing just the rain sounds, I ask students to identify the 2 different sections in the music. It's easy for them to notice that there is one part that has the "kap" sound in it and another section that doesn't. This is an easy way to review form/ same and contrasting sections, and identify the ABABA form.
For younger students I stop there, and we compare and contrast this song with other songs about rain. For older students this is a great song to introduce or review major and minor tonalities! After identifying the form, I ask them what makes the 2 sections sound different from each other. The B section (chorus) lyrics are:
Ой ти, зайчику сіренький, ой ти, зайчику маленький! Oh you gray bunny, oh you little bunny!
годі мерзнути, дрижати, ти ходи мершій до хати, You're freezing and shivering, go home!
ми дамо тобі морквину ще й велику капустину, We will give you carrots and cabbage.
понесеш їх у лісок годувати діточок, Take them to the forest to feed your children
бо маленькі зайченята вже давно чекають тата. The babies have been waiting for their dad.
There is a clear switch from minor to major between the A and B sections, and it's interesting to discuss with students why the composer may have chosen to put the verses in minor and the chorus in major (maybe because the bunny is getting some food to take home to his family?).
After comparing and contrasting "Rain, Rain, Go Away" with the Japanese "Amefuri" and talking about the differences in attitude towards the rain in the two songs, this is a great follow-up song because of the switching back and forth between tonalities. This could be a great jumping off point for a composition activity with older students, when they're learning to write melodies in major and minor tonalities, to compose one song about all the positive things about rain in major and another about all of the negative things about rain in minor. It's a great way to get the ideas going!
I've been sharing my favorite lesson ideas using rain songs from around the world in my previous posts: you can see my lessons for a song from Japan here, and Morocco here. I highly recommend those! If you've ever used this Ukrainian song and have more lesson ideas, or if you have other rain songs that I should add to my unit, please share in the comments!
I was looking for some songs in Arabic to add to my teaching that would be accessible for young students and tie into concepts I want to reinforce in my teaching, and came across this lovely song about rain from Morocco that I can't wait to share with my students! I am thrilled because it ties in perfectly with the other songs from around the world that I already use in my teaching around the theme of rain. There are so many possibilities for using this in elementary music- here are some of my favorite ideas.
If you, like me, did not know this song until now, here is a fun video demonstrating the song with an introduction in English as well:
First of all, just like many other languages spoken across a wide range of countries, Arabic is spoken and written in slightly different ways in different countries. This song is specifically in Darija, or Moroccan Arabic. Here are the lyrics (for the first, repeated section) in Darija:
آ شتا تاتا تاتا A chta tata tata آ وليدات الحراثة A wlidat lherata آ المعلم بوزكري A lmaalm Bouzekri طيب لي خبزي بكري Tybli khbzi bekri
This song is perfect for practicing steady beat and quarter notes and paired eighth notes with my Kindergarten and 1st grade students. After having students copy the woman in the video above to pat the steady beat with the song while they listen, I'll have students practice singing the song while keeping the beat with new moves that the students come up with. First I'll get students to suggest motions that are like rain, then motions that show different parts of making bread. Using themes from the song like this is a great way to get students to solidify the beat while expanding their movement vocabulary.
To practice quarter and eighth notes, I have students sing just the first line (teaching them the word for "rain"), and the clap with the rhythm of the words to identify the rhythm. I like having students practice notating simple rhythms using rhythm cards like these that I made a few years ago. After we clap with the words, I split them up into small groups, give each group some rhythm cards, and have them place the cards on the floor to match the rhythm of the first line.
Once they can notate the rhythm of the first line, I have students take turns using the same rhythm cards to notate their own 4 beat rhythm pattern, then they choose an instrument to use to play their rhythm as an ostinato while the rest of the class sings the song. I use this to talk about timbre as well: I tell them to think about which instrument sound would match best with a song about rain and try to choose an appropriate instrument to accompany the song rather than choosing an instrument based on what they want to play.
This would also be a great song to practice do, re, and mi, or even to introduce ti. The first 2 lines of the song use only do, re, and mi, and the 3rd line adds ti as well- here is the notation for the simplified melody (without the extra sixteenth passing notes in the last 2 lines):
I've done similar solfege practice with other rain songs by cutting out raindrop shapes in the colors that match my classroom instruments' solfege colors, have students aurally identify the solfege and use the raindrop colors to first put them in a row, then put them on the staff. This also makes it possible for students to then play the melody on an instrument, which is a really great way to show students how solfege skills can apply to real world music making in a concrete way!
I hope you are as excited to use this song in your classroom as I am! If you've used this song before and have other ideas please leave them in the comments. If you want to use this as part of a thematic set of lessons on rain songs around the world, here is my post on lessons with a Japanese rain song:
Stay tuned for more lesson plans using rain songs from other countries coming soon!
I love using different songs with similar themes to compare and contrast specific musical elements- I find using songs with lyrics that are about the same topic makes it easier to draw young students' attention to the musical aspects of the songs. Today I want to introduce you to one of my favorite examples of this using a song from my childhood in Japan, あめふり ("Amefuri", aka "Ame, Ame").
I don't know why more music teachers outside of Japan don't use this song- it's easy to learn because the refrain is just onomatopoeia, and the pentatonic melody is so fun to sing! The video below shows the pronunciation of the lyrics with English alphabet letters and animation to show the meaning if the words:
There are several verses that together tell a sweet story about helping a friend with no umbrella, but I just use the first verse which basically translates to, "Let it rain, I'm so happy my mom is meeting me with an umbrella".
To introduce the song, I tell students I am going to sing a Japanese song about rain, and I ask them to listen for the sound of raindrops first ("picchi picchi"), then listen again to find the sound of rainboots splashing in puddles ("chappu chappu"), then the sound of happy humming ("ran ran ran"). Then I ask students to listen to the whole song again and decide if they think the person singing the song is happy or sad about the rain (they always immediately know they're happy), and have them skip around the room on the beat and sing the onomatopoeia refrain at the end. Then I tell them what the rest of the lyrics mean and it all makes sense!
The obvious pairing for this song in the US is "Rain, Rain, Go Away". I sing the song one time and ask students to think about how the person singing this song feels about rain (clearly sad / mad), then we trudge angrily around the room on the beat while we sing it. It's a perfect contrast to the Japanese song that can lead to a quick conversation asking students whether or not they like the rain and why.
These two quick movement activities lend themselves naturally to experiencing compound vs simple meter. I don't actually label them that way with the young PK-1st grade students I use this lesson with, but I do point out how the Japanese song "sounds skippy" and the English song "sounds stompy"- I demonstrate trying to skip with the English song and it doesn't fit the same way. It's a great introduction to the concept without having to get into the mechanics of the time signatures or introduce complex vocabulary.
That's my favorite way to use the song, but I've also used it with slightly older students (2nd-4th grade) to practice pentatonic solfege and improvisation while incorporating compound meter again in a natural, accessible way. This works especially well if the students learned the song already when they were younger, so most of them will recognize it, but I would use a video like this one with anime-style graphics to introduce it to this age group.
If students are familiar with pentatonic solfege, this is a great melody to use to identify the solfege visually or aurally because it goes up and down the scale several times. You could stop there if that's what students are working on, or you can add some pentatonic improvisation by removing the bars they don't need on the xylophone and having a few students take turns improvising a set number of beats each using the notes from the pentatonic scale to create a B section for the song. Boom, they just created music in compound meter! I find most of them start off improvising on the macrobeats, and when I model playing the "skippy rhythms" from the song (quarter-eighth) and encourage them to incorporate some skippy sounds into their melodies, they get it. It's a great way to lay the groundwork for identifying and labeling compound meter when they're older by experiencing it without worrying about the mechanics.
I hope this sparks some ideas for you to use the song in your own classroom! If you want ready-made visuals and materials to use in your classroom, I've shared my resources for the song, including a recording of the song and the spoken lyrics, visuals of the notated melody, lyrics in the original script, the translation, Orff instrumentation to add, solfege manipulatives, and more in this resource:
The theme of rain is perfect for spring, but really it's relatable for students any time of year, and I have found a lot more songs about rain from other countries that I'll be sharing in future posts so stay tuned- I'm so excited about these! For more springtime thematic lessons with songs in different languages, check out the frog unit I created last year with songs from Sweden, Puerto Rico, and Japan, as well as a book that I love to use in my elementary music lessons.
