Latin American Instrument-ing!

Lesson #6: Welcome, Senor Don Gato!

Yesterday I took another trip to Spanish Oaks Elementary! The kids are beginning to learn about cultures: what a culture is, what makes up a culture, and so forth. Some specific cultures they'll be learning about include the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Native American Indians. I knew that the kids loved playing instruments in one of our previous lessons, so I decided to organize our class time around instruments used in Latin America.

Story Time:

First I began by reading a children's story about a cat named Senor Don Gato. I explained that Senor Don Gato lives somewhere in Latin America--probably Mexico. The story follows Don Gato as he receives a love letter from a lady cat, then falls off a roof and breaks all sorts of bones, dies, is carried away to the cemetery, but then upon smelling fish, comes back to life! After reading the story, we pointed out things as a class that are different in this culture than in our culture (clothes, houses, food market).

Next I explained that other cultures listen to different kinds of music and use different instruments in that music. In our American culture we hear lots of piano, drums, and guitar (to name a few) in our music. Then I brought out some old Aztec instruments--an ayoyote (like a rattle) and an ocarina (a little instrument you blow in). There also was an African djembe (d rum). I then compared these to some other instruments I had brought from the BYU Elementary music library--a hand drum, claves, recorders, maracas, guiros, and cowbells. I explained that instruments evolve over time through different cultures and time periods--an example being of how the invention of the organ later led to the harpsichord which then led to the piano. So these really old Aztec instruments (among plenty of other instruments) over time have evolved to instruments like these!

Soundtrack for Don Gato:

Then we created a little soundtrack for just one of the segments of the story--when Don Gato is so excited about his love letter that he falls off the roof and breaks his ribs, his bones, and his whiskers! I wrote out this portion of the book on the white board. The kids had instruments at their desks and helped to decide when each instrument would play while the poem was being read. We created a kind of composition using different symbols above the text to represent different instruments would play (and sometimes if the instruments would play loudly, slowly, quickly, etc). 

Don Gato is a Song Too:

This little story isn't just a poem in a book. It's also a song--a ballad to be exact (a song that has many verses that repeats over and over to tell a story). I showed the class the last page in the storybook--which shows the written notation and sang it for the class. Then I pulled up a YouTube instrumental recording of the song and explained the students would be playing their instruments along with the recording (while I sang--all the recordings I found with singing were either creepy or annoying). First we practiced playing together as a class (they play when I clap). They didn't know, but we clapped a half note pulse, then a quarter note pulse, and then a quick clump of three eighth notes at the end of each phrase. The recording plays all six verses and the kids had to watch me each verse to see which rhythm we were going to do for which verse. We did the whole song once, switched instruments, and then did it again! The kids got pretty good at following me and enjoyed getting to experiment with these Latin American instruments!

Link to Don Gato Recording (this is the slower version)