This songs works well in small or larger groups. The verses are very flexible and you can insert the names of whatever items you have.
You might try selecting instruments from different ‘families’ e.g. wooden, metal, scraping, tapping. Learners will be able to explore how the instruments work and what sounds they make.
Everyone can sing and sign the key words for the chorus. A group member then chooses an instrument or noisemaker and we sing as s/he plays.
Sing the chorus again and then it is someone else’s turn.
It can be fun, when everyone has their instrument at the end of the song, to scroll back around the group just singing the verses – very fast!
Another way of playing which works really well is this.
When one learner is playing his/her instrument, we all sing quietly to accompany the music.
This can be followed by the "chorus", with everybody making a delightful anarchic racket on all the instruments. THEN a huge pause - a deep breath - even a group SSSSHHHH or three if needed and then start the next verse quite quietly with just singing to one instrument.
The idea of this format is that no-one gets bored and there's a brilliant repeating structure to the whole thing.
It is ideally suited for AAC singers, who can use their voice output devices in a variety of ways.
An AAC ‘conductor’ can take on the role of leader, and ask the chorus question ‘What can you play when you play with Punchinello &c.’ S/he will learn to wait and listen until it is time to activate the device again.
Then other members of the group can make their choices. Some examples of they ways they can choose are by looking, by responding positively to a sound, by selecting a symbol or photo, by giving PECS symbols to a helper, by using an AAC voice output device or by speaking. That participant then gets the chance to play solo while the group sings about them and mimes the action of the instrument.
Multisensory possibilities
You do not have to have expensive ‘proper’ musical instruments. Almost anything that makes a noise will do –
I can play the shiny beads,
I can play the crinkly paper,
I can play the whoopee cushion – the possibilities are endless.
