For my birthday, my Mum got me one of these adorable Folkmanis tortoise puppets, as she is something of an enabler of my puppet obsession and also knows I love turtles and tortoises!
Today I'd like to tell you about a simple little spoken chant which is great for vocal exploration in early childhood or prep music classes and which has the added bonus of using my birthday present! Many thanks to Renee Heron for this wonderful idea.
The chant goes like this:
It's great for developing a sense of steady beat and can also be rhythmically analysed using taa and ti-ti down the track.
But perhaps the best use of this chant is helping young children to explore their voices by impersonating the two tortoises in their conversation.
Preface the activity by doing several echo responses in different voice types. Say things like
"This is my speaking voice"
"This is my whispering voice"
"This is my SHOUTING voice"
"This is my sad voice" etc.
Then the children can choose which voices the two tortoises should have and can perform the chant accordingly. This can be repeated many times over with as many different voices as you can come up with. Your only limit is your imagination!
If you're a bit short on puppets, you can also print out these cute manipulatives from my Teachers Pay Teachers store - simply print, laminate and whack them on a paddlepop stick for a fun-filled vocal exploration activity!
You can see them in action in the video below: