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Street Games and Play Parties

© Deborah Jeter

Spring is when the children start getting a little restless in their anticipation for the upcoming summer break. These street games and play parties will be constructive play time and they can be conducted outside, where most of us want to be anyway at this time of year.

With May Day coming soon, this May Pole activity is a great deal of fun and requires a small amount of preparation.

The May Pole Dance

May Pole Pictures

The May Pole of Merry Mount by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I couldn't believe what I found when I typed in "Play Parties" in the search engines. WHOA! It appears that our innocent child-oriented phrase "play parties," means a great deal more than circle games in regard to adult oriented play parties. What a shame. I did, however, know of a few sites that are full of wonderful activities and lessons. I hope you enjoy using these during this last six weeks of school.

Hand Jive!

Singing Games

Circle games

My contribution for this article from my own personal books and resources are as follows:
• Juba this and Juba that This book has tongue twisters, jokes, finger plays, songs with actions, songs with riddles, rhymes, limericks and cute stories.
  Juba this and Juba that, Juba chased a yellow cat, Juba up and Juba down, Juba running all around.

• Anna Banana
  The book begins with saying, "Skilled jumpers can do all sorts of fancy tricks and stunts, but often they prefer just plain jumping, with a good rhyme to keep the rhythm going.

  I went upstairs to make my bed.
  I made a mistake and bumped my head.
  I went downstairs to milk my cow.
  I made a mistake and milked the sow.
  I went in the kitchen to bake a pie.
  I made a mistake and baked a fly."

• 150 American Folk Songs to sing, read and play In the introduction of this book, there are some wonderful quotes by Zoltan Kodaly One of these quotes is as follows:
  "To write a folk song is as much beyond the bounds of possibility as to write a proverb. Just as proverbs condense the people's wisdom and observation of centuries, so in the traditional songs, the emotions of centuries live their eternal lives in a form polished to perfection."

  All the songs in this collection have been transposed to end on G. This makes it easier to compare their melodic elements and to find similarities and difficulties. No instrumental accompaniments have been suggested to the songs. All of the songs are indexed with the particular scale they use so as to make the key elements and intervals easier to utilize when you are presenting these specific musical ideas. One of my classes' favorites has been the "Cotton-eyed Joe". The songs goes like this:

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