Theme Thursday: Jazz, Baby!

Wrapping up my coverage of Jazz Appreciation Month, we have last week's themed story time on Jazz.

Song: Good Morning Dear Earth

Song: We Clap and Say Hello

Flannel: Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone

Book: This Jazz Man by Karen Ehrhardt

Poem: Big, Big, Big

Flannel: 5 Green and Speckled Frogs

Song: Shake the Sillies Out

Song: Grand Old Duke of York

Flannel: The Trumpet Went Toot, Toot, Toot

Poem: I Had A Little Turtle

Book: Jazz Baby by Lisa Wheeler

Song: Turn Around from Getting to know Myself

Make and Take Craft: Romare Bearden style collages

Supplies:

-cut out magazine shapes of musical instruments and face parts (prepared beforehand)

-construction paper

-glue sticks
-colorful chalk

Process: Before the Turn Around song, I showed the kids and caregivers pictures from the Romare Bearden book and explained that he was an artist often associated with jazz and jazz musicians. I showed them my example and said we'd be making our own musical collages. Over on the craft table, I spread out the magazine pieces and chalk and gave each kid their choice of colorful construction paper and one glue stick. Since this was spring break, we had a lot of older kids who would normally be in preschool during story time. I think the craft worked best with the older kids, while the younger ones REALLY liked playing with the flannel musical instruments from The Trumpet Went Toot, Toot, Toot.

Time: This was one of the more prep heavy crafts I've done. My initial idea was to go through magazines cutting out the musical instruments and face pieces individually. I quickly realized that this was a fool's errand since the only instrument I could find were guitars (lots and lots of guitars) and very few of the faces were big enough for individual parts to be useful. So I glued what I already had to a single piece of paper, pulled a few pictures of instruments from the internet and enlarged/made lots o' copies with our copier. That made a huge time difference and insured a more equal playing field for the kids.

Seriously, What About the Time?:  Prep took about an hour, it would have been 20 minutes if I had been thinking smartly from the beginning. And the total craft time was about 25 minutes, the older kids got pretty invested in it.