Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Hope you didn’t forget to wear your green as I know there are a lot of pinchers out there today 😉 To celebrate the occasion, I thought I would share with you a little intervention that I use with children to practice auditory discrimination. This is a simple game that therapists, educators and childcare professionals can all use with ease. This song addresses 3 main areas of development:
– Social Skills
-Motor Skills
– Cognitive Skills
What you need: 2 golden
egg shakers (or a small golden instrument that shakes) and a variety of other small easy to play instruments that make a different sound than the egg shaker sound (i.e. tambourines, finger castanets, jingle bells, etc.).
The Directions: Choose someone to be the Leprechaun and instruct them to hide their eyes so they can’t see the rest of the group. All other children choose an instrument to play with one child having the “gold”. They are instructed to hide their instrument behind their back and play so that the “Leprechaun” can’t see but can only hear what is being played. Once everyone has their instrument hidden, begin singing the following to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” cuing the group to shake together at the appropriate cues:
“Where is the Leprechaun’s Gold? (shake shake shake)
Where is the Leprechaun’s Gold? (shake shake shake)
Leprechaun use your ears, listen close you can hear
Where is the Leprechaun’s gold?” (shake shake shake)
At this point have the “Leprechuan” open their eyes, listen closely and try to identify where the gold is. Â (Note: it is very important that you do not include other sounds that are similar to the egg shakers or other chosen “gold” instrument’s sound so that it stands out. The more children you have in the group, the more instruments will be used and the easier the sound will be muffled). Once the Leprechaun has identified the child with the gold, that child is the next Leprechaun. Encourage the children to share with their peers to redistribute the instruments and continue the process with the new Leprechaun!
Hope you can get some use out of this cute St. Patrick’s Day game! I just used it this weekend with a group of children with developmental disabilities and it was a hit! Be sure to follow us for more free songs and games to come up in the future! Plus I’m working on a few projects at the moment that you won’t want to miss out on when I present the big reveal!
As the Irish say goodbye… “Slan Lat!”
