I love the weeks leading up to Christmas in the music room. The upcoming holidays are almost tangible and you can taste the festive spirit in the air - often because it falls to us to prepare our students for an end-of-year Christmas Carols concert.
In my case this meant that I have been singing carols almost daily since mid-November (despite whinging about hearing the exact same thing in the supermarkets!). Whilst this is usually an enjoyable process and one that I am yet to tire of, I also want to make sure I am still developing my students' musicianship and literacy skills, as well as having time to play games and revel in the sheer fun of music-making.
One such activity is a simple passing game my students and I came up with to practice 3 metre. We were singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and noted that it is in 3 metre. One of the students came up with a simple passing ostinato almost on the spot, and all we needed was something to pass!
I happened to have been making a series of Figgy Puddings like the one pictured above (for said Carols concert) so we dug them out and practised passing puddings as we sang!
It was such a delightfully organic way of tying together our themed repertoire with the concepts we had been studying and, of course my favourite part, puppets!
We performed a simple 3 beat ostinato: on beat 1, place the pudding in front of your neighbour to the right, on beat 2 pick up your new pudding and on beat 3 tap it on your knee before repeating. This can of course be adapted and varied to any kind of three-step pattern.
The design can be downloaded through my Teachers Pay Teachers page and is as simple as cutting out the shapes out of felt and fastening them together with fabric glue. You could even set up a quick crafting workshop in your lesson if you're looking for a way to pass the time!