What Does the Fox Say?? Ideas for a FOX themed lesson!

My students have been super into What Does the Fox Say? this year so I decided that the week before spring break would be "What Does the Fox Say? Day!" It is such a silly, but catchy song.  

Pinterest has been great for many "What Does the Fox Say?" ideas and I plan on using some of those (vocal exploration, orffestrations, etc.) and making an entire FOX lesson for all grades 1-6.  We are singing fox songs, composing or improvising fox sounds, as well as practicing all elements we would be anyways! 

Check out my lesson plans for 1st grade and 4th grade-  Grades 2,3,5,6 are similar to 4th with song lit that they are currently working on.  Both Lessons are 50 minutes.  

1st Grade: We are still prepping ta and ti-ti and s-m since I don't see my kiddos in Kdg.  We are super close to presenting both!

Video of What Does the Fox Say as students are entering the room.  Students sit in front of SB where movie is playing and can sing along until I stop it after the 1st verse.  

Greeting- Hello 1st Grade, Hello Miss Jencson (on s-m).  To individuals I sing Hello, How Are You and "What does the fox say?"  Each student gets to do the greeting today and make up their own silly sound that the fox says for the class to repeat. I have gotten many fun sounds from phrases like "I love you" to just silly noises similar to the video.  

Vocal Exploration on the SmartBoard-  I got this great vocal exploration file on Teachers Pay Teachers for free!  You follow the line with your voice from the tree picture to the fox picture. 

Goin' On a Fox Hunt- Exactly the same as bear hunt, or lion hunt, just using a fox instead.  We go up a tree, through a lake, through tall grass, through sticky mud, then into the cave where the fox is hiding.  On the way back instead of running all the way home, we stay up high in the tree where the fox can't get us, as it is very rare for red foxes to be able to climb.    The tree we are in happens to be an Apple Tree! 

Apple Tree-  We say the chant (I Climbed Up the Apple Tree...)and then play with the word rhythm- saying long and short-short, clapping the word rhythm, doing motions to the word-rhythm, etc.  Check out my TPT store for some beat/ wr charts including one for Apple Tree.  

Poison Pattern- The students just learned the poison pattern game recently and LOVE it.  This time, I made the poison pattern long, short-short, short-short, long and I have them repeat after me unless it is the poison pattern.  For the 1st two points (we play til 3) I say the patterns using long and short-short words but for their last point I play the patterns on the drum and they have to decipher.  

Starlight-Starbright-  The poison pattern is the 2nd line in Starlight-Starbright when PP is over, I have the students help me "put my flashcards that I dropped back in order".  At this level, there are only the 4 that are in the song in the wrong order on the board.  The students help me put the patterns in the correct order, realizing the PP was the 2nd line.  We then switch to High Low practice and show the High and Low notes of SL-SB in various ways.  I got a workout today because the boys always like to do push-ups.  

Do You Hear What I Hear?- This is a Smartboard game in which 1 student presses a picture of  music notes and a pattern is played on the piano.  The students have to match the recorded pattern with 3 choices shown on the board.  If they are correct, they move on to the next question with a GOOD JOB! slide, if they are wrong, a slide pops up that asks them to TRY AGAIN.  

The last pattern always matches a favorite s-m song they sing to Story Position.  I then sing and show them Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night.

If there is time at the end we play Musical Bumps to a recording of Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night.  Students dance to the music and when it stops, they sit.  The last person to sit is out. 

4th Grade: These students have just learned tika-ti and low la.   

Video of What Does the Fox Say as students are entering the room.  Students sit in front of SB where movie is playing and can sing along until I stop it after the 1st verse.  

Worksheet- Students have the chance to make up their own "What does the Fox say?" verse by composing an 8 beat rhythm, showing it to me, then adding silly words like "ring-a-ding-ding" or "wow-pow-pow".  After they have composed their rhythm they are asked to get out a xylophone or metallophone and practice the melody on the board (m-r-d-m-l, in F on staff, which is "What Does the Fox Say?" from the song) quietly.  When all are done, we work together to figure out the melody if they haven't already (I always give the 1st absolute pitch note, and many can read it anyways) we perform our new verses in rondo form with the melody from the board as the A section and the worksheet as the B, C, D, etc.  Get the worksheet from my wix site- just by clicking on the tab above and then clicking on "Blog Files."  

ORFF Aural Practice (2nd and 3rd skip this step and just perform in rondo singing the phrase the upper grades play) - I sing a m-r-d-l, pattern (same notes as used previous) and students echo back using the orff instruments.  Even though the students know high do, la and so I keep the aural practice with a small tone-set when they first learn a new note so they can feel and be more successful.  We will expand our tone-set with this activity as they get more comfortable with low la.  I do many random patterns of 4 beats each and end on m-m m-r m d which is the start of our next song. 

See The Rabbit Running (this is the song that changes- 2nd does We are Dancing, 3rd does Chicken on a Fence Post, 5th does Our Old Sow, and 6th Who Stole My Chickens and My Hens)- This one we get to from the instruments and sing as we put our instruments away.  We then play the Remote game with it where students switch from Words to Solfa (or rhythm depending on the grade) to Inner Hearing using my SB remote (which you can also get in Blog Files or For Colleagues on my WIX Site).  4th grade also conducts this song and then partner it with Old Mister Rabbit (another song with the same tone-set.) 

Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night- I read/ sing them the story, and then we listen to a folk version that has the fiddle that I found on Spotify.  We are just now diving deeper into the String Section so I use this as listening example for Violin/ Fiddle.   (For 2nd and 3rd this actually comes after the worksheet and then after we discuss other things the fox might eat which leads us to our next song.  Both sight-read the songs from the board- 2nd reads We are Dancing from staff notation, and 3rd reads chicken on a fence post in rhythm stick notation).  

Musical Bumps- Same as described for 1st grade lesson.  


Note: 2nd Also does "Goin on a Fox Hunt" and then sings "Apple Tree" (Apple tree, apple tree, will your apples fall on me) at the beginning of class before the story and worksheet.   3rd improvises using ta, ti-ti, and tika-tika on the drum as described in my previous post from the Amy Beegle Workshop.