Here's another Halloween song for you (surprise, surprise).  This one I first taught during my practicum time with Cindy McCaskill in Boulder, CO.  It can be found in Grace Nash's Holidays and Special Days book. (Grace Nash is very well known among Orff teachers. . ..  some day I'd love to take a level.)

Here it is:


To be honest, I actually forgot the second verse until I looked it up tonight.  And Grace Nash has the last word of the first verse as "cats".  Over the course of my teaching I accidentally changed it to bats.

I do this with my 1st graders so I simplified the Orff part.  In her book, Ms. Nash has a broken bordun, where as I have them play a straight bordun.  I also have them add a triangle on the rests (as I'm using this to prepare rest right now.)  Here's my Orff part:  (The second line is the triangle and the third is a bass xylophone):


Here's the slides of the PowerPoint that I use with this song:

First, we sing it reading just the words of the song:

Second, we sing it, keeping a steady beat and reading the words (aligned to the beats of the song):


Third, we sing the song (text) while clapping the rhythm.  I have replaced the text with iconic represtentation of the rhythm.  As a class, we review that two small pumpkins on a beat are ti-ti and one big pumpkin on a beat is ta.  We also talk about why there is a leaf (there is no sound on that beat).


Next, we read the known rhythms of the song.  Again, we talk about the leaf and how that is a beat of silence.  We have not yet presented quarter rest so we leave the iconic notation there:


Finally, after ta rest is presented, we revist this song and read it with the full rhythmic notation: