A musical adventure with Mr McGee
Storytime 2 is a musical innovation on the text Allen, P. (20204). Mr McGee and his Hat. Puffin Books. The fabulous and much- loved children’s author, Pamela Allen, from New Zealand; has published this special text in her 90th year! What a fantastic achievement! The text has been changed and a rhythm pattern has been created using tuned percussion that children play throughout the text.
Covershot: Allen, P. (2024). Mr McGee and his Hat. Puffin Books.
This joyful Storytime 2 session targets the early reading pillars of phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency. Musically, the focus is on identifying and playing a continuous rhythm (a repeated pattern that is played throughout the text, called an ostinato), and to learn to play the notes G and D on a tuned percussion instrument.
Children wear a special hat that they can talk about with the group, building oral language skills. We played a tuned percussion instrument (one per child) during the story, focusing on the notes G and D. The rhythm pattern we learned was:
Ti- ti- ti taa taa ti- ti- ti taa (French time names)
G G G D D G G G D (musical notes)
Sol Sol Sol Re Re Sol Sol Sol Re (Kodaly hand signs)
If children cannot yet identify the letter names, a sticker on the bars/ keys will help them, and show them which bars to play. If you have no tuned percussion (like a glockenspiel, xylophone, recorder, keyboard) an untuned percussion instrument like we used last Storytime session is useful to keep the beat and join into the rhythm of the story/ song. If you have facilities to purchase the text and print the story, children will be able to follow along with Storytime, and at the end, join in singing the song; at the same time building reading prosody, with appropriate pauses, rise and fall patterns and general expressiveness. Thank you and enjoy!Script/ musical score PDF to download
