Winter seems to go on forever in my music classroom, especially in my kindergarten and first grade classes. The kids are still excited from Christmas and have lots of energy from being cooped up inside all day. To get them moving and engaged, I love to play this singing game with them in the winter! Little Snowflakes is a fun singing game that is perfect for practicing musical contour, steady beat, and quarter and eighth-note rhythms! Although this is a great song for the winter time, we play it all year by substituting the word snowflakes for feathers or raindrops! My students love this song from kindergarten to first grade and they love playing the game.
The Song
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The Game
My students always have a blast playing this game. We start by singing the song in a circle, with one student walking around with a "snowflake" (I use a feather, scarf or crumpled up piece of paper). The student holds the snowflake above the heads of the sitting students. When the song ends, the student under the snowflake is out and takes on the role of the person walking around the circle. It's a simple, but fun game!
My students enjoy this variation even more - we all walk around the the steady beat and sing the song, with one student holding the "snowflakes." At the end of the song, everyone else freezes and the student with the snowflakes throws them in the air. If one touches you, you're out. The last person standing wins! For the students who are out, I usually let them start join the person throwing the snowflakes or play some unpitched percussion instruments to the beat. Another great thing about this game is that it doesn't take too long to play, so it is easy to keep the littles attention.
Teaching the Song
To teach the song, I start by echo singing a line at a time. I show the contour on my body while I sing - sol on my head, mi on my shoulders, re on my knees and do on my toes. Once the students can sing it, I take a scarf out to show them the "wintery air." I ask them which way the melody blows for each line and mirror it with my scarf. To extend the lesson further, you could also give the students scarves to trace the contour with. Then, I ask them to tap the snowflakes to the beat to prepare them for walking to the beat in a second for our game!
After that, we play the game!
In the next lesson, we review the song and the game and take it a step further by looking at the rhythms! I start by having one half of the class play the steady beat and the other half of the class sing the song. You could have them play the steady beat on unpitched percussion instruments or just have them keep it somewhere in their body. We then use "snow" and "falling" to read some simple snowflake rhythms.
Finally, we compose! Students create their own rhythms by dragging either Snow or Falling to the four different boxes. I then pair them up and have them speak their rhythms to each other. You could also sing the song while some of the class plays or says the different ostinatos that the students have created!
Finally, we compose! Students create their own rhythms by dragging either Snow or Falling to the four different boxes. I then pair them up and have them speak their rhythms to each other. You could also sing the song while some of the class plays or says the different ostinatos that the students have created!
If you are interested, I have a lesson pack that includes all of the visuals you need to teach the song, the lesson, and a worksheet for students to compose the rhythms.
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