I happened to stumble across this book at Barnes and Noble a few months ago and I totally nerded out on all of the possibilities with this book. It made me miss teaching a little bit because I thought how fun it would be to do a page or two as part as our warm up during music time. This book, to me, is about vocal exploration. This activity can be catered to many ages depending on how extensive and in depth you want to go. For those who are not familiar with this book here are a few sample pages so you have an idea of what this book is about.
Do you kind of get the idea? So each color represents a different sound.
Blue=oh
Red=ah
Yellow=wahoo
There are more colors but for my toddler's sake I just stuck with focusing on these three! :)
How you say those sounds is dependent on what the dots or colors are doing. A big red dot would be a loud (forte) "AH!" a small red dot would be a soft (piano) "ah." It starts off really simple and then gets crazy by the end. I will usually just pick a few pages for my toddler to do and it is such a great tool when teaching him how to use a quiet and soft voice as well as the loud voice (which he doesn't struggle with that one as much)! After we read a few pages and did all of the crazy things with our voice I had him create his own Zoop page! I want to first do a little plug for these Do a Dot paints. I was so happy with these. I first loved how quickly they dried on the paper which made for less mess as well as when my son would mix colors they would mix really well and stay bright. I also just love how clean they are, it makes painting a whole lot more doable without making a huge mess. I love them.
Supplies:
* Do a Dot Paint (if you don't have these or don't want to spend the money you can also use a clothespin and pinch a cotton ball on the end and dip it in washable paint to create the circle shapes) You will need red, blue and yellow paint as well as two other colors.
*White Paper (I used a big poster sized paper just to switch things up a little bit and make it more exciting..it's the little things right? ...or big things I guess!) ;)
Procedure:
1. I taped the edges of the paper to the table. This prevents the paper from sliding and creating masterpieces on your walls and floors. ;)
2. I started out with the blue dot paint. I asked him what sound the blue makes, which is "oh!" I then modeled for him as I painted the dots on the paper and said "oh, oh, ohhhhh!" If I made a line with the blue I would hold out the "oh". I then let him have some fun and create his own "oh's"
3. We then repeated step two but with the red color and the "ah" sound! and then the yellow color with the sound "wahoo" What I loved while doing this was having him notice the different colors mixing and then saying, "look mom, it's purple now or green now." Bonus lesson learned there! Side note: these dot paints are AMAZING at mixing together and not creating ugly colors.
4. This was my favorite part of the activity. I then had my son pick a color and had him make up a sound for that color. He did the color purple and buzzed his lips for the sound...which is a great vocal warm up by the way. ;) We continued on to the different colors and had so much fun making silly sounds. When he would lightly press the dot paint we would go really soft...when he would push it down hard he would go loud.
5. As I was doing this activity I kept it pretty simple for my 2 year old. If you have older kids you can have them "read" their zoop paper to you or even explore low and high notes by saying the sound really high when you paint on the top of the paper and go lower as you near the bottom of the paper. I also saw an idea where you can even put the different color dots on a grand staff and sing the sounds on the matching pitches.
At the end of this activity my little boy said, "Mom! I am an artist!" I can't wait for you to try this at home with your little artists and musicians!! :)