Can you be Mr Dolittle?

Last week I got an inspiration from the animation movie 'Dolittle' and I created a music game to play with my students aged 4 - 5 years old.

Most of you know that doctor Dolittle has the ability to communicate with the animals and understand their language. So, this week, we had a visitor in our class, Mr Blue, the blue Macaw puppet (meet him at the picture below). Mr Blue was really excited about visiting our music class and as soon as he met with the children he first played a music game with them. Then, before leaving the classroom and travel back to Rio, Mr Blue insisted on singing some songs for the kids. Even though I explained to him that they cannot understand his language because they are not like Doctor Dolittle he insisted. He was sure that children understand his language!

So, I told the kids that this parrot thinks that some of them can understand his language and he wants to sing for them to prove that children can understand him. The kids got excited and they all sat down to listen very carefully the Blue Macaw singing. I started moving his beak to the rhythm of some songs we have been singing the last 2 months in the classroom.

Amazingly, the children responded immediately to this game and they started recognizing the songs even from the first verse. This is exactly what we mean when we refer to the creation of a song bank for the children and make them feel like they own the song. As soon as they heard the rhythm of the songs coming out of Mr Blue's voice, they recognized the song and started singing the lyrics.

So, at the end we counted how many 'Dolittles' we have in the class and they were quite many of them. Next time maybe another animal visits the class to sing some tunes in its own language!