This is an excellent activity for practice in keeping a steady beat and reading the notes of the major scale. The rhythms in this song should be taught by rote. However, the tone set is the major scale and the melody can be taught using solfa handsigns or letter names. This would be a good melody to learn to play (slowly) on Boomwhackers® or barred percussion instruments.

Copy the hand patterns for "Chumbara".

Artie Almeida is an amazing music educator and clinician from Florida, who's written and published some of the best resources ever created for music teachers.

She plays a game with Chumbara, where she creates word cards - each with just one syllable.
These words replace the nonsense word chum-ba-ra in the song.

One of our Musicplay teachers built a randomizer to choose the syllables. If the randomizer lands on Nag-O-Goo - you sing the melody of Chumbara to this new word.

So - enjoy the Chumbara silly syllables game with your students!

This song is an Australian bush ballad. A bush ballad was a song written in the 19th century about Australian life during the years of settlement in the countryside. The song describes the scene in a sheep shearing shed. The verses included in the text are those most suitable and appropriate for use in a 5th grade classroom. Have the students listen to the song and ask them what they think the following terms mean: board, ringer, snagger, blow, bare-bellied yoe. Tell them what they actually mean.

Teach the song by rote and sing the song.

This song is about shearing sheep. Teams of sheep shearers go from farm to farm in Australia, shearing hundreds of sheep in a day. They get paid by the number of fleece that they shear, so the shearer who shears the most gets the most pay. The “ringer” is the fastest sheep shearer in the barn. The “bare bellied yoe” is the sheep (ewe). The “old snagger” is another shearer.

The didgeridoo may be the world's oldest wind instrument. Studies of rock art in northern Australia have found pictures of the didgeridoo that are 1500 years old.

Listen to the excerpt and ask the students questions about the recording:
- What instrument family does this instrument belong to?
- How do you think the instrument is played?
- What country do you think this instrument comes from?

Do an Internet search to find more information on the didgeridoo. Students may enjoy doing a research project on world instruments or any instrument that has been used for a long time.

Use this song to review tempo terms and to practice reading the dotted quarter-eighth note rhythm. Read the rhythms and sing the melody using note names or solfege. When the students have learned the melody, sing the song.

Teach the actions and sing the song with actions.

Use this song to present the dotted quarter note-eighth note rhythm. Teach the students that a dot after a not increases its value by half of the value of the note. Lois Choksy taught that you add the value of a dot by adding the sound “m” to the note. Thus, ta when dotted would become ta-m. You would read this rhythm: ta-m ti (or use the rhythm names you prefer.) Read the rhythms and sing the melody using note names or solfa.