Grizzly Bear is a great song to teach quarter rest and dynamics to your kindergarten, first, and second-grade elementary music students! In this post, we’ll talk about some ways you can use this song to teach quarter rest to your music students.
The slides in this post are part of the Grizzly Bear resource I created. The resource includes:
- Words to the song
- Beat charts to the song
- Rhythm icons for the quarter and eighth notes and quarter rests
- Standard notation for the song
- Quarter rest teaching slides
- Slides to learn about dynamics
- Body percussion slides (2 difficulty levels)
- Create your own movement or instrument patterns (2 difficulty levels)
- Playing steady beat and the melody on xylophones
- Playing patterns with instrument (2 variations- djembe/triangle and maraca/bell)
Although you can certainly do the activities in this post without the resource, if you want the slides done and ready to present, you can purchase the resource here.
Teaching the Song Grizzly Bear
First, let’s learn the song Grizzly Bear. I like to introduce this song in the winter when I read “The Bear Snores On” to my students. The story is one of my favorites for fall or winter and I like how it has a very natural feeling steady beat to read with.
I always teach in a whole-part-whole sequence. I sing the whole song first, break the song down into phrases or lines, and then gradually build up to the students singing the whole song. I try not to sing with the students, but I will mouth the words with them. That being said, this is a long song for kindergarten and even first-grade students! For them, I do sing with them for a while until they have a better grasp of the song. I still think it’s worthwhile to break down, even if they will need extra support while singing!
Playing the Grizzly Bear Game
Let’s play the game for the song Grizzly Bear! Playing games is one of my favorite ways to get kids singing, especially the students who are nervous or shy!
I have one student be the bear. All the student circle around the bear, who is lying down pretending to be asleep. Students sing through the song. At the end of the song, the bear wakes up and chases everyone! If they get tagged, they’re frozen! Rounds typically last around 40 seconds, but I time it mostly on how safe they’re being. If they’re able to be safe and not run or push, I let rounds go a little longer. After the round is over, the bear picks a new person to take his place.
Teaching Dynamics with Grizzly Bear
The song Grizzly Bear is perfect for teaching dynamics to your elementary music students! We practice the song with our loud and quiet voices. I really like this video for loud and quiet. Then we talk about what else can be loud and quiet.
After we practice moving to loud and quiet (I love using the piece Faeries and Giants by Elgar) and objects or animals that are loud and quiet, I introduce the concept of loud and quiet in music. We talk about how this makes music more interesting.
Then we listen to part of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. I have them lie down when the music is quiet and the music is loud. It is the cutest thing when they are listening so closely and it gets loud suddenly. They laugh and laugh and we have a great time!
When I bring the loud and quiet concept back to Grizzly Bear, then I introduce the vocabulary of piano, forte, and dynamics. We can practice moving how we imagine quiet and loud to look during the song. Maybe on “please be very quiet” students will tiptoe, then on “if you wake him…” they’ll gradually move to stomping loudly.
Teaching Quarter Rests
I use the song Grizzly Bear to teach quarter rest shortly after I’ve taught quarter and eighth notes (here’s more about how I teach quarter and eighth notes.) I think looking at iconic rhythms is extremely helpful. We review steady beat and rhythm, and then discuss how there are some parts of the song where we pat but don’t make any sound. I like looking at iconic or standard notation of the song because it shows them that it’s part of the music, not just that the song stops.
It’s important to note that the steady beat still happens- I always have students who want to call rests a ‘pause’ and I try to make sure they know that it’s not like the music is stopping. Our steady beat keeps going and rests are part of the music.
One way I like to practice “notating” rhythm patterns is by doing something I call chair rhythms. I put 4 chairs in the front of the room. Each chair is one beat. I’ll say a pattern and the kids have to be the rhythm sounds and come sit in the chairs.
So let’s say that my pattern is “ta ta-di (rest) ta.” I would have one student in chair one, two students would have to share chair two, there wouldn’t be anyone sitting in chair three, and one student would sit in chair four.
Add instruments to Grizzly Bear
Kids love instruments and sometimes I find myself holding out on instruments because I think it has to be this long, elaborate lesson…but that’s just not true! Instruments can take as long as or little time as you want them to! Let’s look at a couple of ways that we could add instruments to the song Grizzly Bear with varying amounts of time.
We could add the steady beat to the song Grizzly bear to teach quarter rests. Using instruments to the steady beat help reinforce the idea that the steady beat continues while our voices rest. Students could play one instrument all together to the steady beat and that’s it. It would only taake a few minutes, but they would still be making music in multiple ways! For example, you could have all the students play the steady beat on the note C on their xylophones.
You could make it a bit harder by alternating instruments. I would start this by having students do two body percussion movements (pat-clap-pat-clap) and then change it to instruments (maracas-bells-maracas-bells.)
Or, you could have students play the melody of the song on xylophones! This could be a great B section where A is singing the song in the form ABA. Now you’re teaching form and dynamics, and it could be a great performance song if you play the steady beat on your xylophone during A while singing and playing the melody on xylophones for B!
Wrap Up
There are so many possibilities for using the song Grizzly Bear to teach quarter rest and dynamics! This song is great because, while kindergarten students love it, it can be adapted for many years after that. If you like the example slides you saw, be sure to check out the full resource. If you are looking for more ideas for teaching quarter rest and dynamics, head over to Instagram and DM me (@caffeinated.j)! I love connecting with other music teachers and talking lesson ideas!
