Little Mr. Bluebird Hopped Upon My Windowsill

Just in today...a gift from a little girl.  Can you see us in pink?

She's on the right...I'm on the left.  

I think we might be friends of gold at the end of the rainbow.  

Yeah!!!! The sun is shining and the birds are singing!   It's time to sing some of our tweet bird songs.:)

Every Thursday morning I sing, dance and play with a parent/child class.  All the children are now between 22-28 months old...I'm not sure of the parent age range...although we do have a few grandmothers in the class.  This morning we sang "Little Mr. Bluebird".

Why do we sing this song?  We sing...

1. to bring attention to the outside world of birds and the coming of spring
2. to learn and speak the names of different types of birds.  
3. to explore bird sounds with our voices
4. to play a vocal echo game using the words "hello", "good day", and any bird sounds we come up with as we play the game.

Little Mr.Bluebird hopped upon my windowsill.

Little Mr.Bluebird cocked his head and sang.

Hello!

Hello (echo)

Good Day!

Good Day (echo)

Hello!

Hello (echo)

And then he flew away!

 

In my new-to-early-childhood-music days...

Before I had a collection of puppets, I used to use my hand to make a bird-type handpuppet shape.  My hand-bird would hop onto my arm/window ledge.  The thumb/head would cock itself and sing.  The fingers/tail feathers would wiggle and fly away at the end.  It was short and sweet.  I still do this but today I wanted to bring in the puppets and really play with vocal sounds.

Now that I'm a veteran...

These days I have quite the collection of bird puppets so we sing verse after verse about  Little Mr. Hummingbird, Little Mr. Duck, Mr. Chick, Mr. Crow, Mr. Woodpecker, Mr. Kookaburra, Mr.Parrot, Mr. Penguin, Mr. Peacock...perhaps you'd like to meet some of them.

Little Mr. Hummingbird (or Mrs.) hopped upon my windowsill.

Little Mr. Hummingbird cocked his head and sang.

etc...

Today we went thru every bird puppet as each child came back for more.

Each child was putting out an arm to let the bird hop on their windowsill and then taking the puppets from me to their parents as we sang each verse and the bird flew away.

I saved Mr. Peacock for last because he is not so little.

Mr. Peacock is such a huge puppet that we didn't actually get thru the verse (too much laughter).

As soon as "Little" Mr.Peacock hopped upon my windowsill one of the dads improvised a new verse...

Little Mr.Peacock hopped upon my windowsill

Little Mr.Peacock scared us all away!

We ended with our flock of birds flying all around the room and then nesting on the floor.

It was lovely!

Do you have bird songs you love to play with?