Feb. 19, 2011
“Hello, Thomas, hope all is well with you and your family! As always, we continue to enjoy our ‘music time with my friend Thomas’ here at preschool. Thought I would share a couple of new twists on some of our favorites.
“I first introduced your song ‘I’ve got a pocket’ [from the CD “Songs For The Whole Day”] along with the story ‘A Pocket for Corduroy’ by Don Freeman.
“I had a tray in the middle of our circle with raisins, marbles, rocks and keys for props and to help us in guessing. The next time I asked all the children to go put something in their pocket.
“When they came back, we sang the song again, guessing with you what was in your pocket – but at the end of the song, we all revealed what we had in our pockets. (I had a note in my pocket with the word ‘Corduroy” on it like in the story).
“Over time, we’ve done other variations; sometimes we all ‘write’ a note, put it in our pockets to share at the end of the story. Other times, don’t reveal what is in our pockets, but give hints like you do until our friends can guess. My stuffed bear friend Corduroy even puts things in his little pocket.
“We compare sizes of pockets. One day we all put our coats on for this song so we would have bigger pockets! Last week one of the little girls got new jeans; she came in exclaiming that we just had to do the pocket song today because her new jeans had the “biggest pockets” she had ever seen!
“When it snowed and we read ‘The Snowy Day’ by Ezra Jack Keats, we imagined what we could put in our pockets that would melt, like the snowball did in the story, and made a list of these things. My class loves this song and never seems to tire of it!
“Another favorite: “At the easel.” The children liked this song so much that we made paint brushes out of construction paper with the color word written on the handle – every color they could think of – and some ‘buckets’ of paint (icing containers). These are in the music center. They ‘paint’ along with the easel song, selecting colors they like. Some prefer to use the CD and just sing their color louder than you do. Some prefer to sing without the CD since they have the song memorized. Another favorite!
“Thanks so much for all you do, Thomas, to enlighten, inspire and educate children and those who love being with children.”
– Trudy, Kentucky
