I discovered this fun, little rhyme from Jbrary several years ago and it has so many applications for preschool music classes.
Here are the words:
Bread and butter
Marmalade and Jam
Let’s say hello as quiet as we can
(whisper: hello)
…as loud as we can
…as slow as we can
…as fast as we can
…as high as we can
…as low as we can
…nice as we can
I often use this chant in the place of a goodbye song where we say “goodbye” all different ways.
All of the ways suggested to say goodbye are great musical concepts to explore with kids. Instead of loud and soft, you could teach them the words piano and forte. You could use adagio and allegro in the place of slow and fast. You could even add other ways to say goodbye, such as staccato and legato.
I love letting the kids offer suggestions for other ways to say goodbye to the class. One of my favorite suggestions is that they want to say goodbye “as medium” as they can after having said it loudly and softly!
Another way to incorporate more music skills to this chant is to have kids play a percussive instrument or tap their legs to the beat as you recite the words.
My favorite application for this song is to take it to the piano and let the kids experiment with playing the piano keys in different ways, using these lyrics:
Bread and butter,
Marmalade and jam,
Let’s play the piano as soft as we can.
(play the piano lightly)
And, of course, you would repeat the rhyme many times trying out different ways to play the keys – loud, smooth, high, low, etc.
This is a wonderful way to let a small child “practice” the piano. In fact, this was my son’s piano practice routine for many months before he was ready to learn other skills at the piano.
This type of activity at the piano gives kids the opportunity to practice sitting nicely at the piano and learn a lot of pre-piano skills that will stick with them as they grow older.