Great Big House in New Orleans

Take a catchy melody, lyrics about food, and a fun dance, and you’ve got the makings of a classic elementary song that your kids will love.

CIRCLE DANCE

Below is a video showing how to do the dance that accompanies the song. It’s a good idea to be extremely sequential when teaching any new dance to your students. Here are some steps you can use to get them prepared to move to the song:VERSE ONE

• Have them stand in a circle. Then, march (in place) to the beat as they listen through the song the first few times.
• Model for them how to march forward and back four steps as you would for the dance. Have the students try it together. Once they have the hang of it, split them into two groups and practice the first verse while singing.

VERSE TWO

• The tricky part during this verse is making sure students are accidentally clotheslining each other with their arms. You may want to try this the first time without the music.
• Another thing to remember is to tell your students to “join hands” rather than “hold hands”. Depending on the age of your students, the difference between those phrases is massive. Otherwise, you might get a collective “EEEEeeeewwwwwuuuuhhhhh” from your students. And that’s a sound we all want to avoid.

 

VERSE THREE 

• Practice stepping sidewise in a circle before you attempt to try it with joined hands. This “step, together” move can be especially difficult for some students.
• Remind students to take small steps. Some will want to span the ocean with their feet, which is admirable, but not what we’re going for in this particular dance.

This piece would be great on Orff instruments, ukuleles, or Boomwhackers™. For the Orff arrangement, you could have students play simple borduns on D and A. The following image also shows the chords you can play using Ukulele.

Below, I’ve created a color-coded chord chart for Boomwhackers. You could also play just the first and fifth of each chord if you don’t have all the pitches.