Ding, Dong Bell . . . .

I love to listen to hand bell choirs.  My sister-in-law's parents were in the bell choir in their congregation for years.  For several years, Christmas Eve found me in their quaintly beautiful little chapel in St Anthony, Idaho.  What a treat!

So, We Bee Makin' Hand Bell Music?  Why not?  And we've already practiced Mary Had a Little Lamb and Old MacDonald on the pianos / keyboards.  We know the variations to the tunes.  So yesterday I promised the kids A Big Surprise for tomorrow! 

I used the copy machine to blow up the musical scores -- sounds pretty official saying "score" -- and then used markers to color code the notes to match the color of the hand bells. 

And then like so many techniques introduced these last two weeks, I was totally surprised to realize I needed to teach the students how to hold the bells, hold to sound the bells, and how NOT to touch the clappers!  Ding, dong!  Ding, dong!

Old MacDonald needed five bells to play the melody, but Mary's Little Lamb only needed four.  So I passed out the five bells, some tambourines,  jingle bell shakers and a triangle and away we went to visit the ducks on Old Mac's farm.  Beautiful!  Amazing!  Awesome!  Sounded almost as good as the St Anthony Bell Choir -- almost!

Turned our attention to Mary Had a Little Lamb.  La Maestra counted out the intro:  one, two, three, four; one, two, ready, go.  -- Ugh!  What?  How?  Why?

Stop!  Stop!  Stop! -- cutting my choir off with a clap of my hands! Disbelief!  How could we go from awesome to awful?

Little Mr R politely raised his hand, "Mrs Smith, don't you need to hand out the yellow bells for this song?" 

Uhhmmmm, yes, yes, thank you for pointing that out!  Clearly an orange bell cannot be substituted for a yellow bell!

Thankfully we are all learning together!