Popcorn Popping

I came across some notes from a singing time I did sometime in the past year. It didn't take the whole singing time, maybe 5 minutes, 10 tops, but was a fun exercise in dynamics and getting the wiggles out. I guess I must have done it when I had a singing time activity that wasn't going to take very long.

For once this is actually all me (I "borrow" ideas from blogs all the time!!). I talked to the kids about dynamics and how they could look at the way I was moving my arms to know whether they should sing loudly or softly. We also talked about how my arms would tell them when to stop singing and when to start again.

We sang through Popcorn Popping (actions included, of course--for the kids anyway, since they were supposed to watch my arms) with differing dynamics. For the first few lines I conducted with tiny movements and crouched down a little, and we almost whispered the song. Then I moved my arms wide, back and forth and up and down and got into it with my body too, and we sang it loudly ("Never Louder Than Lovely" of course...although in my opinion it's hard to be too loud when singing. Screaming is too loud, otherwise the louder the better!). I love getting way into this with my body and the kids respond well to it too. I love watching conductors who really get into it at classical performances. I could never be a real conductor, since I lack all the training and most of the talent, but I always think it looks like so much fun.

Anyway, we did that a few times until we got to the line "A popcorn ball that would smell so sweet," at which point I cut them off and we all pretended to smell our popcorn ball with a deep breath in and out (in through the nose, out through the mouth). Then we sang the rest of the song.

It sounds totally corny (bahaha) but it was very fun and the kids loved it. We still sing "Popcorn" that way sometimes (pausing and smelling the popcorn ball) especially if they need to get wiggles out. I have my kids do deep breaths a lot--my own kids at home as well as the Primary kids--in order to calm down. Just kind of a fun, random way to incorporate it into singing time.