Issue 5: Hi Low Chickalow

This is a little playground clapping game which I learned from my daughter when she was a junior school.  Some children know it as part of a longer clapping rhyme.

Arrange the children in pairs, and get them to shake their right hands together as in “How do you do”, but don’t release each other’s hand. This is the starting pattern.  The children clap their left hands together above their held hands on the word “Hi”, and below their held hands on the word “Low”. On each syllable of “Chicka” they clap the backs of the hands that held together with their left hands.

It is a very useful little pulse/clapping game. Here are some suggestions;

Pitch relationships – Hi/High, Low/Low

Work out the rhythmic notation by ear

Work out the pitch notation by ear.

Transposition (“Suppose you start on G instead of F?”)

Finger exercise for woodwind; start on G, A C or D on descant recorder or saxophone, F or G on clarinet.

Right hand exercise for keyboard; “4 1 22 1” or “5 2 33 2”, add sharps of flats depending on your starting note.

Left hand finger exercise for string instruments (“3, open, 1, open” for violin and viola, “4 open, 1 open for cello”)

I have no idea if this would be useful for brass instruments – sorry!

 

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