Here is the rest of the “mail”. I started in part 1 talking about the first 3 songs in my concert; Writing a Letter, Postcards, and Bills Bills Bills. This post will discuss the remaining songs; Amazon Boxes & Flowers. I Got a Letter has it’s own post: I Got a Letter
Amazon Boxes:
Just like the Postcard song, this song was written entirely by my students. We began with some movement exploration of different pathways we could travel. These pathways then turned into modes of transportation. We picked a couple of our favorites and added students together in groups. My students picked Train, Boat, Helicopter, Airplane, and Mail Truck. We decided on an order and then each group worked on creating their movement together.
Our next class was all about creating a melody to go with the movement. I set up the instruments in the desired pentatonic to start. Then I allowed the students a few minutes to experiment and see if they could come up with their own 4 beat melody pattern that could be played over and over. Each student had a chance to try their pattern. This was also helpful to me to see what they each sounded like and I could begin to see if any of them fit well together. We picked a couple out and had the whole class try and play them. From there is was up to my kids on how they wanted to have the ostinatos play. They chose to have the ostinatos take turns play. This was helpful to the movers as well so they could know when to move onto the next section. We added some steady beat playing in the bass and went from there. It was a lot of student creation, so it depends on your classes how it might sound.
We added the movement and instruments together and tried out some different lengths of playing to see what would match the movement best. We ended up having 1 class do the movement and another play their piece with it. Here is the result:
You can see my students being “Helicopters”, “airplane”, and “Mail Truck”. They also love to go super fast during this song!
Flowers:
This song is from The Orff Volumes, it is called Drei Rosen. I used just the melody from the A section. When teaching my students the melody, I began with body percussion. I find this helps them to see and feel the direction of the melody, which then makes it easier to transfer to the instruments. Here is the BP I used:
Snap, Clap, Pat, Stomp (SMRD)
Snap, Clap, Pat, Stomp (SMRD)
Shake hands above head 2 times, tap head (D’D’ L)
Snap, Clap, Pat, Stomp (SMRD)
When teaching the BP, I taught the students the SMRD part. Once they mastered it, they were in charge of that part and I did the “B” part. Then they learned the “B” part and I did the “A” part. After doing that a few times, the students were ready to do the whole thing.
The next class we reviewed the BP, then went over to the instruments. I followed the same process at the instruments as we did when learning the BP. Students found the “A” part (SMRD), and played that while I played the “B” part. They figured out the B part and I played the A, then we added them together. This whole thing then became the A section to our flower song. We decided that it sounded like flowers blooming.
After learning the A section of the song, we needed some rhythm parts for the other sections. Students brainstormed different types of flowers. Then each class chose 2 to write rhythm sentences about. After picking their flowers we wrote rhythmic sentences about those flowers. I helped a little with making sure the sentences they were writing made sense rhythmically. Then I had the students find the rhythms that matched their phrases. For example:
Roses, Roses, Red and Green Roses
Blossoming violets, all around you!
Cute (rest) Daisy, Rainbow of Co-lor
We then practiced each of the rhythm phrases as a whole group. Then we worked toward overlapping the ostinatos on top of each other. I split the class into 2 groups and assigned a flower rhythm to each group. After they were able to perform their own and then the ostinatos at the same time we added some un-pitched percussion to each group. For the final performance we had the following form:
A (melodic piece) B (2 flower rhythms) A C (2 flower rhythms)
A D (all 4 flower rhythms together) A
Check out my other posts about this concert:
You’ve Got Mail…part 1 & I’ve Got a Letter
Let me know if you have any questions, or need some help with these ideas!
Mallets, Music, Movement and More 
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