Teaching Kinders thru Rhythms and Echoes

When I started out the school year, I was surrounded by priceless little five year old runts that could barely match ONE pitch. My strategy?

1. Start with three solfege syllables: Do, Re, Mi. I spent ten minutes a day having them following my hand syllables adding varying combos of the three pitches. I then added differing rhythms to the patterns so they were combining two techniques in one exercise. 
2. Add one new syllable a month: by Christmas the kids were singing five note patterns, complete with hand signs.
3. Silent patterns: I give the students a pattern with my hand (i.e. do, mi, mi, re) without singing any tones and have them sing it back to me. The kids like it because it's like solving a puzzle and as a teacher it's a great activity because it forces kids to pay attention, (and they WANT to pay attention.)
4. Meanwhile I'm teaching them three and four note songs. We always sing through our songs on syllables first- solidify the melody- then speak thru the words- then put the two together. 
5. Lyrics: They can be very "cross curricular;" speaking through the words, work on articulation and speech, define vocabulary, write on board and read aloud together, make a social studies connection and BAM! These are all strategies that common core SMILES on.
6. Solfeggio is the language for the music classroom. So all the reading and comprehension sections on that pesky district observation sheet? Completely covered with practicing a little solfege- literally every category is touched, with good reason! (It is music class not spelling  reading, writing, or math class- It's our job to maintain that integrity.)
7. Now I'm teaching songs in the pentatonic scale. It's been fun. The kids came in this year scared to express anything, terrified to open their mouths, and unable to sing a note. Now they are...well you can watch the video.

Then this little video cracked me up (he's four):