Five Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten Music Classes

Amy M. Burns Far Hills Country School aburns[at]fhcds.org

stay on task is to pace quickly with activities that have the students actively making music. These include singing the hello song, singing simple and echo songs, playing instruments, moving to music, performing fingerplays, listening to a story or songtale, then ending with the goodbye song. If the students’ ages average four years old, then each activity is around three to four minutes. If you see that you are losing their interest, move on to another activity. Depending on your class time and class size, you might be planning ten activities with two to three alternate activities ready in your “bag of tricks”.

Here are five music activities for ages three through six, though I have taught some of these to as young as two years old. These could be used in your music class routine or in your “bag of tricks.”

Hello and Goodbye Songs

With March being Music in our Schools Month® (MIOSM®), I wanted to write about our youngest learners: preschoolers and kindergarteners. When preschool or kindergarten is added to the general music schedule, it can bring about, at least, a couple of emotions. One is joy. I’ve taught music to preschoolers and kindergarteners since I was helping in my church’s Sunday School and summer camp programs when I was a teenager. I discovered that teaching music to the youngest of learners was a joyful experience for me. I felt that they were sponges and soaked up all of the music you could offer. Another emotion that can occur when having these young learners in your schedule is fear. Since they are so young, one wonders how they will behave and focus in music class. And what to do if they cannot focus, if they cry, or if they have to use the restroom.

Routine

From Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps in Music for Preschool and Beyond to Denise Gagne’s MusicPlay Online Modules, these popular preschool and kindergarten music curricula encourage having a routine for our young learners. A routine can be the key to helping them participate actively in music-making so that they do not lose their focus, cry, or ask to go to the restroom for the entire class time. Dr. Feierabend has an eight-step musical workout. Denise’s modules have a steadfast pattern. Music Together, another popular early childhood music program, also has consistent patterns in its materials from beginning with a Hello song including each child’s name to ending with a Goodbye song. Another concept that has worked well with this age group so that they

There are many different Hello and Goodbye songs that can be found using a google search. Some popular ones are “Hello Everybody” from Music Together, Denise Gagne’s “Hello Song” or “Welcome to Music”, and the call-and-response folk song, “Hello There”. Since I am always trying to memorize their names, I like to use songs that will include their names like “Hello Everybody” or Dennis Lee’s and Larry Miyata’s “Willoughby Wallaby Woo”. What is also nice about many of the hello songs is that they can intuitively be translated into other languages so that all of your students feel included in the song.

Warm-ups or Pitch Explorations with Letters and Sounds

An important part of the preschool and kindergarten curriculum is letter recognition and letter sounds. Therefore, I work with the classroom teacher to see what letters the students are studying that week, or the sight words that are being learned through their reading curriculum. I write the letter or word on the board or on a piece of paper. The students identify the letters and sounds. We then draw them in the air as we sing the sound. We emphasize high and low sounds when they draw and sing.

Songs with Repetitive Patterns

A favorite song with repetitive patterns that the students love is the folk song, “John the Rabbit.” I will sing the song as they keep the steady beat on their laps. I will then ask them what two words they hear a lot during the song (“oh yes”). I sing the song again and they sing the “oh yes.” I then sing the song and they sing and clap their hands on the “oh yes.” The next time, I sing and they jump and sing on the “oh yes.” I then give them instruments like shape drums. The shape drums are wonderful as they are nicely sized for this age group and they reinforce colors and shapes. The students now jump and play the shape drums on the “oh yes.” After that, I change the tempos to extend the activity.

Creating a Rhyming Song

One of my preschool and kindergarten’s favorite songs is “Down by the Bay”. In one class, I will introduce it by singing it while they tap the steady beat on their laps. In the next class, I will sing it while showing Raffi’s book. I like to project the books onto the screen so that all of the students can see them. I can look for the Kindle version, perform a google search to see if there is a pdf version of the book, or take the book I own and project it onto the screen by using a document camera or taking pictures of it and displaying them on the screen.

Statues using Movement Pictures found in Canva

Statue in the Park, or Dancing Freeze, is a great activity for young students to move to various song selections, as well as explore the space around them. The game is played by having the students dance when the music is played and freeze when the music is paused. I also use this to reinforce levels as when I pause the song, I will tell the students to freeze in a high, medium, or low level. In addition, I like to project statue cards onto the screen so that when I pause the music, they are to freeze like the statue on the screen. I used to use stick-figure images to do this. However, when I searched for images in Canva (a free-to-use online graphic design tool used to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos, manipulatives, slides, and more) I found beautiful images of dancers from around the world. I now project them up on the screen so that students can see people from around the world in various dance poses and students in my class can see many people who they connect to on my screen.

In the next class, we perform it as a call-and-response where I call and they respond. In the following class, we discuss rhyming words. This is also advantageous if they are discussing rhyming words with their classroom teachers. I give them paper and crayons/markers and they draw rhyming pictures. A mixture of responses will occur and I accept them all. Some will draw a rhyme from the book, like “moose and goose.” Some will make up a rhyme (that is not an actual word but that is OK) such as “pizza and eats-a”. And some will create a rhyme like “You and I and sky”. I write down what they draw. I take photos of the pictures and place them into Book Creator (https://app.bookcreator.com/. You can create a Book Creator account for free and create 40 ebooks. The next class I record each student singing a solo on their page (“Did you ever see you and I singing in the sky?”). Once finished, I share the ebook in their Seesaw Journals for their caregivers and families to listen to. The portion of the published ebook is optional. Learning, singing, and drawing to the song has always been a popular activity in my young music classes.

Adding preschool and kindergarten music classes to the schedule can be a wonderful and amazing experience. If you are given the opportunity to teach this age group, you will be considered a rock star. And if you need assistance, ask questions in various social media groups like NJMEA’s Facebook group or the Elementary Music Teacher Facebook group.