Someone's Gotta Wanna Play
Suggested Activities for Parents and Teachers

Someone's Gotta Wanna Play     
PreK-1st Grade
Make Something New:  This song lists all sorts of objects used in a game of baseball.  Using magazines and their own drawings have your students make baseball game collages.  For the younger students you can include a small lesson on shapes and make the collages on paper that is diamond shaped (like the field) or round shaped (like a ball).

1-5th Grade
Write Something New:  This song is a very simple list of things that comprise a baseball game.  What are other sports or activities that need more than one player?  Using this song as an example, talk with your students about various sports or activities and what they are comprised of.  Discuss the equipment, the playing space, the uniforms, etc.  Using this newly gathered information, have your students rewrite the song about a different game other than baseball.

Grampa & Me
PreK-1st Grade
Play Something New:  This song features an instrumental break played by kazoos.  A kazoo is a simple instrument that is easy to play.  You can even make a sound like a kazoo by making a circle with your fist, putting it up to your mouth and humming into it!  Using common household objects like coffee cans and paper towel rolls, have your students make their own instruments and play along with our kazoos!

1st - 5th Grade
Do Something New:  Grampa & Me portrays grandparents as active people who play an important part in a child's life.  They are figures of authority and respect as well as creative playmates.  Talk with your students about the important older people in their lives.  What do they do?  What are they like?  What are some favorite memories about these people?  Share this information with the class.  Then, working with a local Senior Center, begin an Adopt-a-Grandparent program in your school or classroom.  Have your students interview a senior citizen to learn what they did with their grandparents when they were children.

Fine By Me
PreK - 1st Grade
Learn Something New:  Fine By Me is all about celebrating differences.  Use this idea to teach about opposites, or antonyms for older kids.  Have your students draw pictures of opposite things and talk about why they are different from each other. 

1st -5th Grade
Explore Something New:  Working with the idea of celebrating differences, have your class discuss what life would be like if everyone was the same!  Working in pairs, have each of your students draw a picture of their family or their bedrooms.  Looking at the drawings, have the pairs discuss things that are similar or different than one another.  Ask each pair to write about what they have learned.                     

A Little League Lament
PreK - 1st Grade
Learn Something New:  The narrator in this poem clearly has terrible eating habits!  Use this poem to start a lesson about healthy eating with your students. 

1st - 5th Grade
Make Something New:  Even though this is set at a ballgame, the narrator isn’t mentioning the ballgame. People like things uniquely, and like them for different reasons.  This narrator likes stadium food – it’s her favorite part of baseball.  Have your students choose a topic (such as a place or an activity) and as a class, brainstorm unusual reasons someone might like the topic. Make a classroom collage or drawing to illustrate your ideas.                         

The Haircut Song             
PreK - 1st Grade
Learn Something New:  The child in this song does something she is not supposed to do - she cuts her own hair.  Listen to the song with your class and discuss how the parents in the song feel about the child's actions.  What about the reactions of the child's friends?  Are they positive or negative?  What are the consequences that the child has to accept after she has cut her hair?  Have your students make up a conversation between the child and her parents that discuss the consequences of her actions.

1st - 5th Grade
Write Something New: This song tells a story. It uses very clear images and lots of adjectives to describe the events of the story.  On small pieces of paper write a wonderful adjective.  Give each student three or four of them at random (perhaps have the kids pick them out of a hat!) Ask each student to write a short, descriptive paragraph about the topic of their choice that uses all of the adjectives they have.      

On it for the Ride  
PreK - 1st Grade
Play Something New:  This song starts off slowly and gets a little faster as the train picks up speed.  Play a movement game with your students.  Have them stand in a line and pretend that they are a train.  Let the train travel around the room, first slowly and then faster and then slowly again.  Then give your students other movements to try like marching, spinning, tip-toeing or dancing.  Change the speed to varying degrees of fast or slow.  This will help develop their large motor skills while they are having fun!

1st - 5th Grade
Try Something New: Depending on where you live, your students might ride trains daily, or they may have never been on one. Talk about various kinds of trains (steam trains, subways, etc.) Using maps of your city or of your country, plan a train trip.  Give each student a map to plot out their own train travel plans.

My Tooth is Loose             
PreK - 1st Grade
Dance Something New:  The chorus of this song is about wiggling a loose tooth all around.  Make up a wiggle dance with your class that follows along with the words of the chorus.  Like the large motor skill activity above, try it fast and slow, or make it even more challenging (and silly!) by wiggling individual body parts, like just an arm or just a foot.

1st - 5th Grade
Write Something New:  Losing our teeth is a rite of passage.  What are some things that your students look forward to as they get older?  What are some things they are nervous about or are not looking forward to?  Discuss these ideas out loud with the class and then have each student write a short story illustrating the ideas that were shared.

I'm Sick                  
PreK - 1st Grade
Cook Something New:  We all have home remedies for getting over the flu (or other ailments).  Make a pot of chicken soup in class and discuss whether or not your students think things like chicken soup might make you feel better when you are sick. Why or why not?

1st - 5th Grade
Make Something New:  With your students working in small groups, assign a symptom listed in the song's chorus or a line of the song's verses to each group.  Have each group or student draw a picture to illustrate that particular symptom or line. Put all of the drawings in order to make a book illustrating the song. 

Wheels
PreK - 1st Grade
Learn Something New:  The child in this poem has just moved to a new neighborhood and feels lonely.  Ask your students what they think they could do to make a new child feel welcome.  What are some places in your neighborhood you would want to share with a new student?  Use this idea to open a lesson about your neighborhood geography.

1st - 5th Grade
Sing Something New:  Like A Little League Lament, Wheels is a spoken-word poem.  Use either of these pieces to launch a poetry unit and include information about how a song is a poem set to music.  Have your students create a tune for this poem or for another poem you may be studying.  How can you tell what style music would suit it best?

Just Pretend      
PreK - 1st Grade
Imagine Something New: Young children play pretend all of the time.  It is a natural part of their growth.  Use their natural inclination toward pretending and do a small class play.  Have kids act out the adventures in the story.  Some kids can play the mother or the two children telling the story.  Others can be the pirates, horses, or even the bicycle!  Trade parts so everyone gets a turn or invent other parts that can be added in.

1st - 5th Grade
Invent Something New:  Many famous stories have objects turning, or being used as, other objects (think Cinderella's pumpkin).  Bring in a bunch of common household objects like hairbrushes or pencils.  Have your child make up alternative ways of using them.  Then ask your students to be as creative as they can be in coming up with how other everyday objects could be turned into something special with a little imagination.  Draw before and after pictures of the object and it's creative counterpart.

Play                   
PreK - 1st Grade
Draw Something New:  The child in this song feels lonely.  Have your students draw pictures of how they are feeling or you choose particular emotions for them to illustrate.

1st - 5th Grade
Write Something New:  The narrator in this song feels lonely and complains about the rain coming down. Discuss how the weather make you feel differently. How do you feel when it’s sunny? Cold? Raining? Have your students write two contrasting poems about the weather and how it makes them feel.

Long, Long Day    
PreK -1st Grade
Sing Something New:  Young students may still have naptime in school.  If your class time includes a nap, have your students learn the words and melody to this song.  Ask some children to sing it as the others are beginning their nap.  This can become class ritual as each of the students take their turn each day.  This idea will develop their musical skills and self-confidence while also providing a nice, quiet start to naptime.

1st - 5th Grade
Discuss Something New:  Often students think that lullabies are for babies, but this one is clearly written for older children.  Discuss what your students were like as babies.  What were they like as toddlers?  In kindergarten?  Discuss how we change as we grow and make a class collage of the kid's favorite things at different ages.  Ask each student to bring in a picture of themselves as a baby. Mix all the pictures of up, and have the class try to guess who is who.