The play "The Alien's Christmas," is an Orff-Schulwerk based play written by Orff expert and music professor Marcelline Moody. She has presented at many Orff-Sculwerk music teacher conferences and has taught many Orff-Schulwerk courses in Canada. I became aware of this play while doing research on the web. Some other music teachers had been talking about Marcelline's work favourably on a message board and mentioned "The Alien's Christmas." As a member of the Alberta chapter of Carl Orff Canada, I wrote to Carl Orff Canad - Manitoba Chapter (Marcelline's former home province) and kindly asked if the Manitoba chapter would lend me the only copy I could find in existence. They kindly agreed to let me borrow the play and mailed it to me. Marcelline's play is intended to be for Kindergarten to grade six. I have adapted it to fit for our kindergarten to grade three group.
This year the wonderful drama expert Mrs. Reimer has kindly stepped in to take over the direction for the acting parts of the play. She has worked very hard to produce a number of highly entertaining and adorable videos for your enjoyment that feature the creative use of blue-screen technology that adds a wonderful sense of whimsy to the production.
This song explores the use of a particular rhythmic pattern called Tikka-tikka. The children experience this rhythm as it becomes part of their regular repertoire of songs. Later in grade three or early grade four, they will made consciously aware of this rhythmic element. The same idea is going with this song with regard to the pitches. The highest note of the song is called “high do,” a note they will be consciously made aware of later in grade three.
The song “Aliens Dance” furthers the ideas put forth in grade two song “Decorations Song” with slightly more complicated instrument parts and a slightly more complicated dance. It also practices the notes “so-la-so-mi.” While “so-la-so-mi” is a grade one level learning, it is important to go back and practice these elements learned in the early grades in ways that are interesting and unique to older learners.
The rhythmic chant “Elves’ Chant” builds on the same idea begun in kindergarten and brought up into the higher grades of using expressive voices as a basis for developing good singing voices. This reinforces the ideas started in kindergarten as well as providing a chance to experience speech with actions.
The song “Caroling Song” features the notes “so-mi” which the grade ones were consciously made aware of in term one. They show the notes “so-mi” with hand signs when that part of the song comes around. In addition, grade one students continue to reinforce their ability to keep a steady beat which we see on the instrument parts. Even though only a few students play the instruments in performance, all students have learned all the parts in class time and have practiced keeping a steady beat together. The song “Caroling Song” also introduces students to the idea of playing a song by putting together the pieces into one continuous piece of music and introduces them to the idea of form, in this case: same and different.
The song “Decorations Song” features slightly more difficult material than the song in grade one and explores many of the same ideas. Instead of keeping a steady beat, the children now play a continuous rhythmic pattern on the instruments, also called an “ostinato.” Once again, all students have learned and experienced all of the parts in class time leading up to the concert. The main focus is on singing and instrument skills as some students play an instrument part that goes along with specific words in the song.
Decorations Song also features singing, dancing and playing.
Decorations Chant continues to practice and support the same concepts in kindergarten and grade one with expressive speech. In this case, there are more words and the rhythmic material is a little more complicated.
This song works on children’s singing voices. One of the earliest skills that young children learn to become good singers is to identify and use their high and low voices. This song makes this fun with actions and silly words about Reindeer. The chorus of “Clippy-Cloppy” allows the children to explore expressive voices that go high and low. The main portion of the poem sees the children saying the words “high” and “low” with the corresponding high and low voices. A rhythmic chant such as this one is a good activity to work on singing which begins with expressive speech.
This song allows the children to experience singing with simple actions. The melodic material isn’t consciously attended to by kindergarten children but gives them much experience with familiar patterns such as “mi, re, do,” and “so, mi” which is covered in detail in grades one and two.
While this song has been done quite a lot, I have chosen to include this year to both challenge the German language group in Mrs. Massey's gr. 2/3 split class as well as the grade one and kindergarten groups. Because the grade one and kindergarten classes are now integrated with a pull-out group from each to work on German, it was quite useful to have both German and English lyrics handy when working on it in class. This song is quite notable for both it's German and English versions.
This song is part of Marcelline Moody's play "Alien's Christmas" which she wrote. I have adapted it to be accompanied by the guitar. Pianist accompanists are more difficult to come by and can incur an added cost. If you or anyone you know might be interested in accompanying in the future and has a grade 10 level piano or similar, let me know.