A Hunting We will Go Song maps and SmartBoard

Back to "A Hunting We will Go"...I neglected to mention that before my students ever put their map on paper and tried to follow it, I used the SmartBoard to draw my map. Of course Kindergarten was most impressed! Going on now- The class sang for me as I drew my map and then followed my map. I followed it too fast, too slow and finally, they decided that I needed to go just the right speed to get to the end of my map when the song finished. We talked about the beginning and the end of the song and how I knew where it was. The "X" was my beginning and where the line stopped was the end. The class traced my map in the air while we sang it again making sure to stop our finger at the end. We also used the SmartBoard map to find different places in the song like "fox", "box" and "go" marking over these places darker. We talked about the rhyming words of fox and box. My SmartBoard lesson had a page where they could drag the fox into the box.

The SmartBoard has become for me what a felt board or poster paper was for teachers in the past. I like to be able to take what I've done before and use the new tools that I have in the classroom. The SmartBoard is a lot of fun and students love to touch it and manipulate the pictures.

The students enjoyed this lesson. They love the song, they love the game, they liked the SmartBoard map, they enjoyed every aspect of the song. Who would have guessed that it would be so fascinating but there are so many things to find and discuss in just this one song. That was always the beauty of the early Song Works ideas. Simple songs that offer so many things to learn inside of them. There are layers and layers to unfold and see what lies beneath. It is amazing how many things you can do with one song. I think about that we haven't even begun to consider the melody or the rhythm. Many layers, one song.