Kindergarten music lesson ideas

Hi everyone! This is Aileen from Mrs.Miracle’s Music Room. As I dive into writing lesson plans for this week, I thought I’d write a blog post with a Kindergarten lesson that worked really well for my students and I this past month.

A little background about my Kindergarteners: I see them once a week for thirty-five minutes, and have six classes. At this point in the year, I’m about to present steady beat, have taught loud/quiet and fast/slow, and have done lots of vocal exploration.

With this lesson, students were brought into the room follow-the-leader style with me chugging like a train, and then we chanted “Engine Engine.” I had them wind into a circle as we said the chant two or three times, and then we sat down.

Then, we sang “Here we are together,” which is to the tune of “The more we get together.” The lyrics I use are:

Oh, here we are together, together, together,

Oh, here we are together in music today.

With Mrs. Miracle, and Macy, and Jenna, and Scott, and Michael, etc…

(sing all of the kids’ names around the circle)

Oh, here we are together in music today.

On the “day” part of “today,” I have students hit the ground. If there is an even number of students in the class, you’d sing your name again  at the end to even it out.

After that, we move onto greetings, in which I sing to students “Hello, Kindergarten,” and they sing back, “Hello Mrs. Miracle” on sol-mi. I ask them questions like “How was your weekend?” or “What’s your favorite color?” and then answer back as a group (with lots of answers being sung at the same time) and then I call on individual students. I use a toy microphone which students love to sing into, and then write down on a rubric of 1-4 how students sing so I can track their pitch-matching.

After this, I like to return to the first chant or song we did and do something more concentrated with it. In this case, that would be “Engine Engine.” I had students say the chant without me, and then I added an ostinato that goes “ch ch woo woo” (all quarter notes.) As I did the ostinato, I pretended to move my wheels on “ch” and pretended to pull the train whistle on “woo.” Then, I asked students what I did, and they identified what words I said. Then they tried the ostinato as I tried the chant! (Great for partwork skills!)

Then, I played “Apple Tree” on recorder, and students identified the song. We sang it, stood and played the game, and then sat down. I showed them a sheet with four rows of four apples, and pointed to the apples (to the “feel of the music,” since they haven’t been presented with beat yet), and asked them what I did when I got to the end of each row. Then I handed out a sheet to each student and had them point. I had them sing through the song three times while pointing so I could help out students as needed (and make sure I had time to observe all the students.)

I collected all of the apple sheets, then told them I had a song about an animal. I sang the song “Nanny Goat,” and had them identify that the song was about a nanny goat and a billy goat, and we talked about the difference. After a couple times listening to the song, students sang the song with me.

Then, I told them that the nanny goat lived on a farm with some other animals. At this point, I launched into the story “Mr. Stingy Man,” which can be viewed here:

Then I said, “Simon says, stand up.” I played a little bit of Simon Says, then said, “Simon says, do what I do when the music starts.” I played one of the tracks from the Keeping the Beat CD, which can be found here (please note, this is an affiliate link):

This CD has great music for beat-keeping! I did motions in groups of 8 (patted my lap 8 times, patted my head 8 times, jumped 8 times, etc.) and students followed. About halfway through, I asked for suggestions and we did student suggestions (like clapping, spinning, etc.)

Then, we sat down in front of the smart board. I told them that since it’s been snowing lately, we are going to sing some snowflake patterns. I opened up a SMART notebook file (which had a snowflake background from the gallery) and drew a pathway with the SMART board pen, and had them echo my pathway. I did a few of these (students were familiar with this kind of activity, as they had done something similar with ghost melodies.) Then, I had about 10 or so students come up to the SMART board and create their own pattern, then perform it. As they did this, I gave them a creation grade (plus for creating something out of the box, check for creating a typical pattern, and minus for something not very creative, like a straight line) and a performance grade (plus for performing it exactly the way it was written, check for performing it almost correctly, and minus for doing something completely different than what was written.) I listened to the rest of the class in the next lesson.

The kindergarteners seemed to really enjoy this lesson, and I loved that they were able to create and give ideas during the lesson, instead of the lesson being completely teacher-centered. You could swap out the songs for different songs, depending on what you're working on and what literature students know.

If you're looking for more Kindergarten music ideas, you can download another lesson for free here. You can see this blog post with Kindergarten activity ideas, and this blog post for tips for teaching Kindergarten music. I hope this has been helpful! Happy teaching, and Happy New Year!