Preschool demonstration
 

My son's preschool teacher wants me to come in and teach the kids about bass. What should I do for a couple dozen 3-5 year olds?

The Elephant by Camille Saint Saens seems to be the standard to show off the bass to the young-uns.

Maybe adapt a short children's story or fairy tale illustrating the characters using different themes and effects (pizz, arco, low, high). Something along the line of Jack and the Beanstalk might work great: Low E for the Giant, arco glisses for going up and down the Beanstalk, etc.

Plus, they're going to want to touch the bass, pluck the strings, etc. Bring some Sani-Wipes. :smug:

Please do not
 

Slap.

I did this for each of my three kids when they were in kindergarten. I played a few kiddie songs from TV that I knew the kids would recognize; some pizz and some arco so they could hear the difference. And I played a couple of them in different registers so they could hear the same melody low, middle, and high. I told them that note names go from A to G so that to be a musician they only need to know half the alphabet. Then I let them ask questions. A group of preschoolers won't have a long attention span, 15 minutes at most.

My kids like me to play cartoon theme songs ( but the current stuff they watch on TV not old stuff).

Can't go wrong with Spongebob. My 8 year old learned it very fast (right AFTER Crazy Train, that's my boy!!).

I did this in December. I brought the other two guys in my trio in so that I didn't have to stand there and try to be interesting. We just played jazz. A couple of things happened.

After the first tune one of the kids said "that sounds like Charlie Brown's music". Which I was pretty impressed with. I explained who wrote and recorded that music and pointed out that she had a good ear, that both were trio jazz and there was a similarity. Then the kids one by one started saying "Play the Charlie Brown song! Yeah play it!" So, we faked our way through Linus and Lucy.

The other thing that happened is there was near uniform obsession with the drum kit. None of them showed any interest in the bass or piano, but they all had questions about the drums. Probably in part because it's fun to beat on things and also because kids love our drummer Wayne for some reason. He's a giant, hip, teddy bear.

They were great, they really loved it, the teachers really loved it. They got it in their own way and it was a great experience for us.

I don't know if any of that helps you, but in conclusion, kids are amazing and they'll take it where they take it. Just go with them. :-)

"Charlie Browne" is a frequent response to jazz by adults. I think I should learn that one. I think it's just got five chords.

Piano player knew it (all piano players do), drummer and I faked it pretty convincingly, though I couldn't tell you now what it was that I played.

Fooled the **** out of those 4 year olds, though!

Very cool, guys. It's shocking to me how many kids have never been exposed to live music.

My sister in law is a foster parent. The foster kids will come over to hang out, see me playing, and just stand there with their mouths open because they've never seen a person playing an instrument before. I'm talking teenagers. Very sad.

"Play jaws!"

Kids are impressed by simple things.

....Or the John Cleese DB version of the Psycho Theme.