Chi Chi Bird Song

Many of our friends have been singing the Chi Chi Bird song from Jamaica lately. The song is fun and upbeat and makes us feel like we are playing our instruments at the beach! Maybe we just have Spring Break on the brain! :)
The real reason we are singing this song though, is becuase of the clever rhythm pattern it contains. We decided what note value one bird was supposed to represent and added a picture of that note underneath each bird picture. We know that when we see a quarter note we clap one time and when we see a pair of eighth notes we clap two times, so under the lines with just one bird, we placed quarter notes and under the lines with two birds, we placed a pair of eighth notes.

You might have also noticed that there is a funny looking squiggly line at the end of this rhythm. Our students know that is called a quarter rest and it tells us to take a little break in the music and rest for one beat. Sometimes we rest our handheld instruments on our shoulders when we see quarter rests to remind us not to play on those beats!

We learned how people in Jamaica play this song on steel drums and then we chose the instruments we would like to play this song on to help us sound like we are in the islands. The rhyhtm pattern matches the true title of the song, "Bam Chi Chi Bam" with its quarter notes and pair of eighth notes. These friends are from Miss Mangum's class in the blue pod. They did a great job following the Chi Chi bird pattern today!