What an interesting instrument the kalimba is!
"The kalimba is a modern-day example of an ancient family of African musical instruments. Hugh Tracey, an Englishman who fell in love with African music over the course of his 50 year stay in Africa, started a company in the late 1950's called African Musical Instruments (AMI). AMI began shipping kalimbas with the western "Do-Re-Mi..." scale in the early 1960's, and now people all over the world are building and playing kalimbas."
--Excerpt taken from Kalimba Magic: Learn about the kalimba
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I wish we could have used real kalimbas today from our class. I did want to expose students, though, to how diverse the variety of kalimbas in the world are--ranging from home made to high end works of art. Using varied images of kalimbas, I created puzzle peices and had the children work as a team to "solve the riddle" of the halved marimbas. Together, they found the matching half to the pieces and we then enjoyed watching this incredible video of "Danny Boy" played on the Kalimba. Check it out!
We also viewed this neat Afro-Cuban drumming video!
Finally, our older children had a blast at the end of class rolling the bean bags in a relay race. I played Booker T and the MG's "Green Onions" for this...they really enjoyed playing the game to the music!
Here we are with our kalimba matches!
In infant and toddler class, we read "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain" by Luella Connelly!
And then there's this precious and smiley video of one of our favorite songs, "Clap your hands with me".
The toddlers really enjoyed the "Kalimba" video!
We had fun with a "fly" finger puppet and a song/game called "Shoe Fly". Check out the toddlers enjoying it here:
Fun with beanbag rolling!