Friday Favorites: {Old Gray Cats}

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We have been busy at Toneworks getting grant applications ready so that we can start our work again in Early Childhood Special Education classrooms at several Minneapolis schools! In preparation, I have been going through my book of songs and found this gem that is a traditional song, but in Lynn Kleiner’s “Kids Make Music, Babies Make Music Too” with some great ideas for movement.

Old Gray Cats is a song full of little mice and sleeping cats. You may want to keep it simple for toddlers or pre-k children. Have the whole group pretend to be mice or cats for each verse.  Older children can be divided into groups (hand out pictures/stickers of mice/cats to assign) and act out the verses at the same time. If you’re lucky enough to have Orff instruments, you can really utilize a variety of musical cues during this song. Try a slow beat on a tone bar or fifths on a xylophone for the sleeping cats, quiet staccato 8th notes for mice creeping, a wake up signal for the cats, and crazy pentatonic scales for running around! Here is the sheet music on scribd.

There is a lot of room for improvisation as a music therapist in planning this music therapy intervention. The intervention can be tailored to work on goals of imitating movements, working with a group, following directions, and sequencing. This is a great song to use at the beginning of a session to get some of the wiggles out and get children ready to focus for any interventions designed to meet academic or cognitive goals.

We hope your little ones have fun working together during this intervention like ours do. Contact Us by e-mail for more information on how to get Music Therapy Groups with Ms. Lyndie or Ms. Andrea at your school or daycare.