Yellow Belt - Lucy Locket



Lucy Locket's sparkly, orange purse

I wanted to make a concerted effort this year to ensure that I play more games when teaching the recorder. Instead of just going through the method book I thought I would focus on the Karate belt songs and come up with some sort of interesting activity for each one. Here's what we did for the Yellow Belt - Lucy Locket.
We started the lesson off with the classic Lucy Locket game:

1. Teach the words and melody for the song.
2. One student waits outside in the hallway.
3. Another student hides Lucy's "purse" (I used a lovely, orange bag as her purse).
4. Call the student in the hallway back inside.
5. The class sings the Lucy Locket song, increasing the dynamics as the student gets closer to the purse and decreasing the dynamics when they get farther away.

I made sure to stress the fact that singing loudly is not the same as shouting and warned the students that the game would end when people started shouting.

I put the rhythm for Lucy Locket on the SmartBoard and we clapped the rhythm together. We then played the rhythm on our recorders using "B" only.

I had the students figure out which notes BAGE went with the rhythm of the song and then we played the whole song together.

All in all this was a succesful lesson. I was surprised by how much the Grade 6s enjoyed playing the Lucy Locket game although I will admit I did not play it with one of my classes. I was probably in a bit of a bad mood because before their class I found out that we'd probably have to walk away from buying our dream house since there was mold in the attic that would cost $10 000 to remove along with another $10 000 for a roof so needless to say I wasn't happy and a little sensitive. So when I started off the class by mentioning that we would be playing a singing game and the kids groaned I ended up just saying "Forget it!" and launched into a lovely lecture about attitude. They did play Lucy Locket very well just without the joy that would have come with playing the game.