Today, my first grade class brought me the book The Itsy Bitsy Spider, but it was told and illustrated by the same person (I'll get back to you on who). I thought it might be a fun idea to sing the book. What I didn't know was that there were several versus to this song that were quite funny! The spider ended up in many different places! After we sang the book (with all its versus), we used xylophones, metalophones and glockenspiels to accompany ourselves. This was perfect, because one of our first grade goals for this trimester is "I can identify high and low sounds." When the Itsy Bitsy spider went up something, the kids took one mallet and went up the instrument in one swoop. When it came down, we went the opposite way in one swoop. They had so much fun. It would be a great introduction to instruments if you haven't already introduced them to the xylophones. We also ALWAYS practice with cheap mallets on the floor before we move to the actual instruments so that the students get the idea of how to move them and when. For the parts that were similar to the line "out came the sun and dried up all the rain" we had a couple of students on hand drums who just "tickled" the drum with their fingertips.
If your students are already handy with the instruments, you can have the woods play a broken bordun on F and C. The metals can do the swooshing up and down. After "dried up all the rain" glocks can play octave F's.
Lastly, there are different tone colors that are used while playing this piece either way. Another concept that can be covered!
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