Activity

This is a four corners game. Assign a number to each corner of the playing area. One student (or the teacher) will guess which corner they think other students have snuck to. When students are “caught” they sit in the center of the room and sing the song. Only students who get out have the opportunity to be the guesser.

Teaching Tips

  • Make the rule that you if you make a noise to fool the guesser, you are automatically out and don’t get a turn that round. You can compliment the student for being clever, but talk about how it is unfair and what it would feel like if they got out because somebody did that to them.
  • When there are 4 or fewer students, do not allow the sharing of corners. This makes the game more fun!

Language/Cultural Note

This is a song where the lyrics have been adjusted based upon the who was taking transcriptions. In the song “Chickema” is originally “A Chicken” or “a Chickey”

The word “Craney” is the Gaelic word for the color black. This makes sense given the song was collected from the Ozark mountains and a large number of Irish and Scottish immigrants settled in these areas.

An alternate version of the song and game is available from The Kodaly Center for Music Education