Explorations in Teaching

Practice Spinners

Pretend Bow - Pre-Twinkle - Version 2.0

To make this bow I bougth a bunch of wooden dowels and sawed them down to me 20" each. I also bought one square down and sawed smaller peices, about 1.25" (give or take). After sanding all the pieces, I used wood glue to glue the frog piece to the stick and let that dry for 24 hours. I then used the KwikWood epoxy glue to fill in the cracks between the round stick and the square shaped piece fo the "frog". Laslty, I painted the bows, and also painted different colors for where the students' fingers will go. Red is where thier middle finger might lie. The blak dot is where their thumb will rest. And the green line is where their pinky will sit. I anticipate using these bows for their earliest of violin learners who will practice the different Twinkle rhythms while bowing on their shoulders.

Canons and Rounds in DM, Dm, GM, & Gm

I collected these rounds from the Feieraband Canons & Rounds book and changed some keys and adapted them for use with early string learners that have likely sung these same songs in their general music classes. They can be used in private lessons or with string ensembles as an orchestra warm-up or even as a concert piece if repeated a few times.

"Danse Rustique" - Suzuki Cello Book 5 - as a ZUMBA WORKOUT?????

Vivaldi Cello Sonata in E minor; Largo - Suzuki Book 5- In the Style of an INFOMERCIAL MONTAGE?????

“Ti Zwazo Koté Ou Pralé?” - Haitian Children's Song

I've been trying to explore children's songs from around the world for students to play while learning the cello. I looked into some Haitian ones because my little niece is Haitian-American. Unfortunately, it seems that all of the Haitian folk songs for children are super scary (at least to me!).

"Ti Zwazo Koté Ou Pralé?" seems no different. Whenever I hear it, I also imagine I am surrounded by a lot of birds (please excuse the horrible photoshop job).

It was fun to play around and make all the bird sounds and different noises on the cello again. I think my students will also enjoy doing this. I anticipates some fun chaos

Still learning about this song. Many variations have more to the song and differences with the lyrics and melody.

Here are some of the lyrics:

Ti Zwazo Koté Ou Pralé?

Little bird where are you going?

Mwenn prale kay fiyét lalo

I am going to Lalo's house

Fiyét lalo kon manje ti moun

Lalos eat little kids

Si ou ale lap manje ou tou

If you go she'll eat you too

Brik kolon brik, brik kolon brik,

Wosiyol mange korosol

Nightingale eats soursop fruit (x2)

These ares some versions that I love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ply3...​

https://open.spotify.com/track/62ppUA...​If you were song this song growing up, please feel free to share the lyrics and melody you learned with me.

"Moon Over the Ruined Castle" & "Wake Up, Littles Sparrow" by Ella Jenkins

When I was teaching general music, I always wanted to use the song "Wake up, Little Sparrow" by Ella Jenkins. I found it to be so entrancing. However, the range wasn't really good to use for singing with young children. Also my students thought it sounded too sad! LOL.

I had some fun experimenting and combing it with "Moon Over the Ruined Castle", a song which I am still learning the history of, from the Suzuki cello books. (I will post the lyrics and more information about that song later).

The two songs together are a little clashy at one point, but I think it mostly works.

I added an extra line of "Moon Over the Ruined Castle" but with harmonics, to fit with the "Wake up, Little Sparrow"'s song form and also give an opportunity for students to practice harmonics on the cello.

Required listening after this is "Little Sparrow" by the inspiring Haitian-American cellist Leyla McCalla.

Wake up, Little Sparrow

By Ella Jenkins

Wake up, wake up, little sparrow

Don't make your home out in the snow

Don't make your home out in the snow

Little bird, oh don't you know?

Your friends flew south many months ago

Your friends flew south many months ago

You're just a baby, you cannot fly

Your wings won't spread up against the sky

Your wings won't spread up against the sky

Wake up, wake up, little sparrow

Don't make your home out in the snow

Don't make your home out in the snow

"Lightly Row" Lofi?

"Theme from Judas Macabeus" & "Bluebird"

"Allegro" & "Ah, Poor Bird" Partner Song

"Allegro", by Shinichi Suzuki, from Suzuki Cello Book 1 - Illustrated video with "Wake up, Wake up" Lyrics

"Hey There Mousy" - Pre-Twinkle Suzuki Song and Video

Humoresque - Suzuki Book 3 - Story Video

When I was teaching elementary general music, I made this music Bingo game to help my students learn the notes on the staff. They loved it, and even when some of my students went on to be in strings in 4th grade, they still asked me to play it from time to time. It was also useful if I had to sub elementary band on top of my elementary strings class. I pulled out this game for everyone to play, and the students had a lot of fun working with partners or by themselves. I specifically only used notes on the staff because of what I was teaching in my general music classes. However, Bingo sheets geared for first notes on the violin, cello, and viola are coming soon!

Here are the measurements for the foam cello that I made, as well as a printable outline! The lower bout of the cello that I made is about 1/2" smaller than the printable outline. At the time, I had to make the lower bout a bit smaller due to the shape of the foam that I happened to have, but actually the smaller lower bout worked well for my niece. I would suggest sizing the cello to fit your student/child, and going a little bit smaller than the outline as needed. I would also size the length of the fingerboard to fit as well.

In the Suzuki method, many students begin learning to take care of and position a cello by first using a foam cello. The students practice rest position, playing position, a proper bow hold, and carrying and holding the instrument with this 'fake' cello. Once they have shown that they can demonstrate care of the cello and patience to sit and hold the cello for a given amount of time that the teacher feels is appropriate, they are given their first 'real' cello. I decided that I needed to have a few foam cellos on hand for my future students. So I decided to experiment and make one for my niece.

For months I have been Face-timing my niece (who lives about 250 miles from me) and playing cello for her. She is a little over two years old. She is completely in the pretend play stage at this point in her development. She loves to pretend to change her dolls' diapers, make pretend food for her mom and dad in her pretend kitchen, and even pretend to watch TV on rocks she picks up from the ground outside. (Side note: children can be the most creative human beings, but that is a topic for another blogpost.) At this point, everything is pretend. Even her potty that she pretends to go potty on. All of this pretend play is a gigantic part of her development and learning, and I wanted to capitalize on this moment and cultivate a love for music in her. So I envisioned this cello to be sort of like a pre pre-Twinkle cello for her; something that she can play around with and have fun with.

I started off with just a piece of wood that I had gotten with a bow repair that was sent back to me one time, and random pieces of foam that I had found in my garage. I traced the outline of an old broken violin that I had to the foam and cut out the outline of the body. I didn't have enough foam for all the layers, so I had to add a layer of bits and pieces of foam. I used whatever glue I had (mostly tacky glue) to glue the foam, and then let it dry with a few heavy books on top.

Next, I did a lot of sawing, sanding, and carving to figure out a good size and shape of the fingerboard and bow.

After getting a rough shape of the fingerboard, I tried to carve out the shape of a bow using the remainder of the wood. The wood was a little tricky to work with and I ended up carving off too much at the tip of the bow, but it still worked well! I tied and pieced of string round it to make "horse hair". I ended up using plaster of Paris and tacky glue to make the string extra secure. I cut a pencil grip and added that as a bow grip.

I glued fabric to the foam with a mixture of tacky glue (and whatever glue I could find), and also glued to fingerboard to the the foam. I added the finishing touches of paint and designs to the bow too. I put hearts on the side of the bow, thinking I could say to my niece, "make sure you can see the hearts", and flowers on the front so I could say "can you show me the flowers?". I was hoping this would help her hold it with the correct angle. I also added a snowman sewing decal with hot glue, because my niece loves snowmen. I was hoping the would help her make up and down bows (if I said "pull the snowman this way" and "push the snowman that way"). For the endpin I found an antenna in my garage that had come form a discarded radio. I hot glued the endpin in. It stuck out a bit permanently, but when it adjusted its size it actually stayed in place.

I made strings out of yarn that happened to be multi-colored. I was hoping to say to my niece, "can you put your fingers on the red string?". I weaved the string through rubber bands that I had placed at the top and bottom of the fingerboard. My mom ended up making a purple drawstring bag/case, and we practiced taking it out and putting it away.

My niece loved her foam cello! She wanted to play it as soon as she woke up (as you can see, she did not even take off her bonnet lol!) At first she was too shy to play it, and wanted her bunny rabbit to play it while she sat in the audience and clapped. Then, when I was looking she picked it up and told me she wanted to play, and started to pretend play as I sang Frere Jacques. Then, without me prompting, she started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and played it for her baby sister.

During my first year of teaching, I worked in a school which had a very limited budget for a strings/orchestra program. Needless to say I had to improvise in order to have a functional program with as little hiccups as possible. One of the issues that I faced was that I needed cello racks to store the cellos. The cello racks I saw online were priced at at least $500. That wasn't going to work! So I decided to attempt to design and make my own out of PVC pipe. I ended up spending about $50 of my own, but the end result was the handiest piece of equipment in my classroom, and totally worth it.

After visually gaging and experimenting, I sawed out all the pieces of PVC and put them together without glue first to confirm that my design would work. Finally, I glued the PVC together (this part was a bit tedious as I made a few mistakes and had to go back and forth to the store to purchase new PVC connecting parts a few times.)

After fitting the cello, I ended up going back to the store to purchase some pipe wrap insulation to let the cello rest on a softer surface. I cut up smaller sections of this and also put these where the neck rests on the cello rack. However, these ended up making the cello rest not as slanted as I wanted and ended up coming off anyways when my students used them (I kept forgetting to glue them.) Lastly, I spray painted the PVC just because.

The end result worked out really well for my classroom and it only cost me about $50.. The only disclaimer I would give with this design is that if you have cellos with very wide bodies, then three 4/4 size cellos will fit very snug on this rack. I used my 4/4 size cello to measure and make the rack (picture in the first four photos.) However, I ended up utilizing the rack to store my students' 3/4 size cellos simply because I had exactly three 3/4 size cellos that were being used, and to keep them all in the same place. (Some of my students still had trouble distinguishing between 3/4 size and 4/4 size cellos.)

I ended up making another cello rack for my 4/4 size cellos with slightly larger measurements. I also used these in my classroom all the time. However, I found that once I extended the length of the measurements of the longest PVC pieces that went horizontally, the PVC dipped down a little bit and wasn't perfectly straight. It still worked very well, but it didn't seem as sturdy. If I were to make this again I would probably a pair or two of extra feet on the bottom to support the weight of three or four full size cellos. (I will add that a few of my students' cellos were exceptionally heavy.) I ended up storing the bows for these in extra empty bass bow cases. Next time, I would probably add a hook behind where each cello rested to store the bows.