Doggie, Doggie

I am actively practicing notating sol, la, and mi on a 3-line staff with my 1st graders right now.  We have recently used the song "Doggie, Doggie," which I'm sure most of you are familiar with.  If not, here it is:

  I recently made a PowerPoint presentation of this song, which teaches rhythm and solfa, which you can find here:  Doggie Doggie presentation

This song is great to review staff notation. I usually use a 3-line staff with my 1st graders, and get to a 5-line staff in 2nd grade when I introduce "do."  We do a lot of activities where the students read staff notation, write staff notation, and improvise staff notation.  With this song, I created a simple game where I made 4 different cards with the staff notation.  The students received these cards and had to sort them in the right order:

Afterwards, we practiced singing them in a different order.  The kids got a kick out of this - they thought it sounded so funny!

This song has a very simple guessing game that goes with it that helps the students practice "solo" singing:  

It is a great, non-scary way to get your kids to sing by themselves.  It helps me assess whether or not they can match pitch.  However, sometimes my kids get restless and I added a part to this game that keeps them playing it longer, so I can assess more kids :)  If the "doggie" guesses the "thief" correctly, they get to chase them around the circle to try to get the bone back!  Just that one little addition that gets the students moving a little bit makes the game so much more fun, and my kids just beg and beg to play it.

Happy playing!