Sneezy the Snowman
Need a video walk through of this lesson plan? Click here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf0AaY28LRk&t=107s
Children are naturally more curious about something if it is told to them as a story. Stories are an amazing way to get students engaged and learning without them even knowing that they are doing it.
Every year when the weather turns cold I bring out my “Sneezy the Snowman” by Maureen Wright lesson plan for my k-2 students.
This is a fantastic story with an amazing beat to it that will get the students chanting, singing and sneezing along with you!
The first thing I do is teach my students a song I made for this story. Using my characters from Pitch Hill( if you don’t know about Pitch Hill it is a product I recommend every elementary music educator should have- click here to find out more- https://bit.ly/3bxAJJ8)
Pitch Hill is essentially a tool used to make abstract solfege syllables into stories! It takes each solfege syllable(do, re mi, etc.) and makes it into a character with it’s own background story(this background story also connects to the Curwen hand sign) song, and musical exercises. You can also click this link to Pitch Publications(one of my favorite sights for music education- https://pitchpublications.com/pitch-hill/ to find out more).
My students and I go through all the pitches and take a song that looks like this
and put the solfege in to change it to this. 
My students especially like pretending to sneeze at the end!
Everything is color coded and because my students are so familiar with the pitches on Pitch Hill singing on solfege is not a huge challenge. For my kindergartners I tend to only use sol, mi and do. When they see these pitches they try to copy my hand signs and sing after me. After my students have sung the song using only the solfege I add in the words and then we are ready for the story!
“Sneezy the Snowman” is about a very peculiar snowman who is always cold. Because of this he tries a variety of ways to warm up. Each time Sneezy manages to get a bit warmer he melts as a result.
A few phrases that constantly repeat, and I make sure to encourage my students to say along with me, are…
– “He melted!”
– “The children all cried, “what should we do?”(I always have the kids say this part)
– “A voice from the puddle said “Make me brand new!”(my students are in charge of pretending to be Sneezy, who has been turned into the puddle from trying to get warm, but of course they have to try to sound like a puddle(it is very interesting watching them try).
After we finish the story it is time for us to make our own snowman! Using google slides I found a great way to do this while working on my k-2nd grade students ta and titi rhythms. First I start by putting a very boring snowman on the smartboard.
I then ask my students what they think of my snowman…they always have plenty to say on this topic.
“He doesn’t have a hat!” or “Where is his carrot nose??” I then ask the students if they would like to help me finish our snowman.
Using our ta and titi rhythms students have to clap and say the correct rhythms for items that we want to put on Sneezy. Items such as a “Tall Black Hat”- I say and clap this to a titi – ta rhythm that the students then have to decide the rhythms for. The student that does it right is then able to come up to the board and put the “hat” on his head. This I did all through google animation and it was very easy. We take some time in between adding new things to review what else he is wearing.
At the end our snowman looks finished and if there is time we might have a quick snowball rhythm fight. This is just where I take pieces of paper with rhythm patterns on it and the students get to try throwing and finding one. Then I have some select students try to chant their rhythms before we throw them again.
You can also do this same activity using popsicle stick rhythms to get some quick and easy grades!
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Happy Playing!