Materials for the lesson

From the previous day before, the teacher tells the children to bring:

Small Stones (there are decorative in each house, if not from the street and the parks)

Wooden kitchen spoons for cooking.

Small pans or coffee pots (small casseroles).

Soup spoons.

The teacher separates the children so as the next day in class, they can bring a variety of percussion instruments.

The Teacher’s bell

Layout of the classroom

The desks at the sides, empty space in the middle.

The course would be best to take place in the yard weather conditions allowing.

1^st Phase

The teacher divides the children into two groups.

Musicians and dancers (or harvesters/apple collectors).

The teacher tells the children that an apple tree rose in the middle of the class (with the help of our imagination, off course).

The apple tree has many apples, ready to fall. But we cannot reach as they are higher than us. But we will hit them finally with our percussion instruments and our dance.

2^nd Phase

Learning the rhythm and the dancing of the apple-rain (all the children, once divided into the two groups, will play both roles in succession).

3d Phase

The rhythm of the apple-rain.
Stones and wooden spoons hit the first 3 beats (3 first rounds).

Metal pans and spoons give a beating when the hand rises up to reach the apples.

The whistles whistle when the apple drops and the harvesters/apple collectors bent-down to get it.

The dance of apple-rain.
The students of the group of harvesters/apple collectors enter, one behind the other, in a circle. The center of the circle is the apple tree (of our imagination), marked by the children of the group of musicians, sitting in the middle and playing the percussion instruments.

Movement A. Starting with the right foot, they are making, by stepping-down their feet (two times each), three steps.

(Percussion instruments: Stones and wooden spoons)

Movement B. Stretch the left hand high (to get the apple).

(Percussion instruments: pans and Metal Spoons)

Movement C. They bend to catch the (imaginative) apple that fell down.

(The musicians, who have the whistles, accompany the bending with a whistling sound).

4^th Phase

The groups can exchange roles when the teacher decides.

ATTENTION!!!
Dance and music can be anything the teacher thinks or wants. It is better to have certain length of time so as to help the children to learn, to pass the pace and movement into their body and, rhythmically, follow the steps.

It is better for the course to take place in the yard, especially if there is a tree, but also because of the noise that will be caused and which might be disturbing in the classroom.