MELODY - LITTLE BAT

Little bat, little bat,
You are such an acrobat.
Flying low and flying high
in the dark October sky.
                    Original Poem by T Borden


My Grade 3 students are doing really well with singing and recognizing mi re do patterns.  With the past few weeks of success, I want to push their literacy to include reading, creating and improvising -  transferring to soprano recorder.

This week, I used Little Bat as my foundation to create simple B-A-G melody patterns for a B Section in our poem.  I found some wonderful unfinished wooden bats online and purchased and painted them black.  On each of the bats, I place glow-in-the-dark letters -- m, r, and d.

One of my October bulletin boards has a large tree on the left side of the board.  While the tree has many limbs, I purposely created two longer branches that comes out from the left side into the right side of the board.  This creates a B and G line -- the space between is our A space.  While we recited the poem, I placed 8 bat shapes on the 2 tree limbs and in the space between to create a class m-r-d melody.  We sang this after the poem, and then repeated the poem - creating an ABA form.  After completing this a few times, I invited a student to "create" his/her own "batty" melody as we recited the poem.  The only criteria I gave them was that the last bat MUST end on the bottom branch - so that our melody would end in do.

The second time we did this, I used a set of bats that did NOT have m, r, d letters on them.  I wanted them to begin reading the m-r-d patterns.  Then we repeated the activity as above - creating several ABA selections.

Then I decided that it would be fun to provide the children with an opportunity to create their own "batty" experiences.  To do this, I had the children trace each hand on black construction paper with a black crayon, pencil or marker.  Once they had traced each hand and cut them out carefully with safety scissors, they used glue sticks to glue the right thumb on top of the left thumb -- leaving the 4 fingers wiggling on each side.  The 2 thumbs (glued on top of one another) create the bat body.  Add white paper eyes (or wiggly eyes from the craft store) -- or just click on the link below to buy them.

As the children recite the poem, choose 7 children to place their bat on the bulletin board.  I used an owl with a quarter rest in his tummy for the last beat.  Remind them that bats do not like to be on top of one another -- thus, the bats can be "read" from left to right.

After reciting the poem, invite the children to sing to pattern on mi, re, do.  Repeat the poem and then invite them to play the new "bat" song.

Repeat the whole thing again to create a rondo pattern.

FORM:  A - Poem
              B - Sing "bat" melody
              A - Poem
              C - Play "bat" melody
              A - Poem

Extension:  Try playing these B-A-G melodies on soprano recorder.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE WOODEN BAT SHAPES