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Post by Alexa Rosenbaum, Toneworks intern

Lately I have been delving back into my childhood for song inspiration and Raffi is always my first choice for simple and catchy melodies that I can turn into fun music therapy interventions.  Our current theme in the ECSE classrooms is animals, so Raffi’s song “Going to the Zoo” fits perfectly into this theme.  Even better, it can be adapted in so many different ways to accommodate the skill level and interests of the group! Once you start listening to this song you will probably be singing it for the rest of the day, so it’s definitely one that kids and teachers could learn and sing along to right away.  I recently found my brother’s old collection of Beanie Babies and I was amazed at how many fun animals he had that I could use in our classrooms for a variety of different songs.  This activity could be done with the parachute if turn taking is difficult or if you are running short on time. However, I think it would be even more fun to put all the animals in a bag and have kids pick one without looking so that it’s a surprise!  Raffi’s song has three different sections, but for the sake of keeping the group’s attention I think I would just start out singing two of them.  Below is how I would structure this activity:

First, we would sing and tap our knees while singing “(name of child)’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow. (name)’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, we can stay all day”

Then I would have the child whose name we just sang stick their hand into the bag and pull out an animal.  After having them and the rest of the group name the animal, we would sing and move like that animal.

For example, if the child were to pick the elephant we would sing “look at all the elephants stomping their feet, stomping their feet, stomping their feet. Look at all the elephants stomping their feet, we can stay all day” and everyone would stomp their feet as we sang.

Depending on how the group is going, that child could pick one of their peers to go next or the leader could pick a child who was following directions and imitating movements.  We would do this until every kid in the group has chosen an animal and at the end it would be fun to review who had what animal to reinforce the names of both the animals and the group members.

There are lots of different animals and motions you could incorporate into the song, but here are some ideas I came up with: monkeys swinging from the trees, crocodiles chomping their teeth, giraffes stretching their necks, birds flapping their wings, snakes slithering on the ground, sharks wiggling their fins.

We use many different books in our sessions that have kids move like animals, and they have so much fun identifying the animal and it’s always great to get out some of their energy by moving in a fun yet structured way.  I can’t wait to try this one out with my classes this week and I have a feeling that I will see lots of smiles and giggles when kids pull their animal out of the bag!