Ten Little Indians?
/In the second week of Spring classes we sang Hay Ya Na from the Music Together collection. I enjoy singing Native American music because you get to use your chest voice. Using your chest voice instead of your head voice is different than the way we normally sing today. I feel like I'm forcing louder sounds out when I'm singing with my chest voice. Have fun with this different style of singing at home and in class!
Our free dance was a fun polka version of the song
. I don't have a link to listen to it all for free, but you can
for under a dollar if you're interested.
My kids love this version of 10 Little Indians. The regular version of this song was a standard preschool counting song when I was a kid. You can use it to teach your kids counting forward 1-10 and backward 10-1. It's also a great way to work on fine motor skills by showing how many with your fingers.
The word Indian is no longer considered "politically correct." But as a home school mom I think omitting the term completely does my children a great disservice. When Columbus sailed to America he thought he was in India. That is how we got the term Indian instead of Native American.
We have a dry erase map at our house and I had my preschooler and kindergartner simply draw a line from Europe to America and then look for India. They could very easily see that America is in the way if you are trying to get to India. We discussed why Columbus wanted to get to India, to buy and sell goods, and how his train of thought to go around the world would have been right if America wasn't in the way.
Correct map of the World
Here is one of the first maps of a round world from 1482. It was made by Ptolemy long before Columbus thought the world was round.
