Singing games are favorites for a reason. They are engaging, students WILL sing to play them, and students don’t realize how much learning is really going on. Mouse Mousie is one of my favorite songs to bring back. It’s an easy theme (cat and mouse) to expand lessons on, and one of the first REALLY fun singing games that I end up teaching my students.
The Song
Tone Set: DMS
Rhythm Set: Ta TiTi
Rhythmic Form: ABCB
Melodic Form: ABA’B
Grades: 1-3
The Game
Students sit in a circle with one “it” outside the circle (the mouse).
The mouse turns their back and the teacher (or the previous student who was out) silently chooses a cat.
The mouse walks around the circle while the students sing the song. I like to make them keep the beat with their feet.
At the end of the song, the cat jumps up and chases the mouse around the circle. The mouse must make it back to the cat’s spot before they are tagged or they are out.
If they are out, they must sit in the middle until another mouse is tagged. The cat is the new mouse. (To speed up game play, a new mouse and a new cat can be chosen.)
Ta TiTi
This is a great song for Ta TiTi. With a nice variety of Ta TiTi patterns, this one is a great song to bring about for reading in the practice phase. I personally like the idea of students writing new mouse/cat themed words to the rhythm patterns and then rearranging them in a new form to create their own composition.
When I’m working on this with Ta TiTi sometimes I don’t play the game for time’s sake, and to have something to latch students when I reintroduce the song for Do.
This is also a good pair with Cat and Mouse Vocal Explorations for this age.
Do
What I particularly love about Mouse Mousie is that it really helps establish tonic chords. The entire tone set is the tonic triad and approaches Do either by Sol-Mi-Do or Sol-Do every time. This is a really nice song for late prepare/presentation/early practice because of this set up. This is also a great opportunity to add chord patterns or do-sol instruments underneath the song. You can easily extract the “hurry, hurry do” pattern and use that as well for more layers.
Older Beginners
If you have beginners who haven’t learned solfege before, this is a nice song after the initial Do-Re-Mi to bring in Sol. It’s got the tonic chord set up so it can easily work in those discussions, and the game is still engaging for upper el because it’s a chase game.
Book
There are TONS of music related books involving cats and mice. Like, at least a couple dozen. If you are looking for a book to pair with this lesson, it can really change depending on what you are working on in your classes. Or if you are simply looking to pair a book on the theme. If you go to www.theultimatemusicedbooklist.com and in the “Edit” menu look for “cat” or “mouse” under Find and Replace, you’ll find a bunch of options that may fit what you are teaching.
Listening
This is a great song to pair with The Cat and Mouse by Aaron Copland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyD1J8ZKsCw
Resource
I hope this has given you a lot of ideas!
