Children love to move a lot since they are bursting with energy. You can keep them focused and interested in your lessons by using Action Songs and Educational Music Games. Action songs are very popular especially to toddlers and children. Here are a few simple ways that you can use Educational Music Games in the Classroom with Action Songs.

1. Use action songs as motivation. When they start the lesson do a couple of songs that they know straight away. A warm up like this will get preschool children moving and ready for the rest of the lesson.

2. Use your action songs all day, in many different subject areas. There are educational music games that help kids learn about the parts of the body, be familiar with the letters of the alphabet, and even name shapes.

3. Use Educational Music Games as a replacement from traditional worksheets or tests. Since they are in the form of music, they are easier to remember and even memorized. Your activities will be enriched and enhanced by engaging in games as part of your lessons.

4. Action songs can develop your children’s imagination and creativity. Children can do amazing things when asked to creatively come up with actions for a song. They also develop their attitudes of cooperation, patience, and helpfulness.

By using some of these action songs in the classroom, hopefully you can improve the chances of Music Theory being popular with the students.

Sue Henshce is a preschool and elementary school expert, and a Mother. She also works in an informal role as an advisor and editor for the Fun Music Company in working on their Elementary Music Worksheets and their Educational Music Games for young children.

Submitted by Leslie Cheyne

This can be used especially when working on timbre…in older grades the students have brought in their band instruments….and we use a brass, woodwind, string and percussion instrument for the 4 sounds!

Then set the buckets up in front of the class and make a line with tape on the floor about five (5) feet from the buckets or less depending on the class.  The idea of the game is to see how many bean bags the students can throw into the buckets.  To receive points the students must be able to identify the notes they throw their bean bags into.  I usually set up two teams or three teams and they see who can score the most points, but this game is an excellent way to reinforce the knowledge


Submitted by Karen Collier

Then you can get the students to ‘play’ the word on an instrument. The first to accurately play the notes in correct octave position wins a point.

Submitted by Stacey Smart 

A lesson plan doesn’t have to be complex, and teachers who have been in the game a while can do it almost without thinking, however they do always have something ready and a lesson plan in their head or on paper.

Teaching Music should be a lot of fun, and there are a few ideas that can make it more fun for both the teacher and the class.

1. Do a variety of activities

There is a saying that goes “Too much of a good thing….”, and in teaching is is very apt! Even if the children love a particular game or song they will eventually lose interest in it, so make sure you stop while they are still liking it and move onto a new one.

2.Each segment should be short and to the point

Depending on the nature of the lesson it it always best to structure your lesson into short 5-10 minute segments. In a general music/singing lesson at elementary level you would normally start with a song or two, break it up with some percussion or rhythm work and them move onto another song and maybe a game at the end.

3. Do something unexpected every now and then!

Its definitely a good thing to keep the students guessing about what they might expect next! You should always keep some stability of course, but you may wish to break it up by heading out to the playground for a lesson with some games, or visiting another class to sing them a song. Do something unexpected and you’ll suddenly find that some students really love coming to your class!

4. Have a surprise around every corner

All children love surprises, especially young children! Get your students inspired by having a reward for the best singer one class, then the most well behaved the next! Having little incentives are a great idea, but if you can mix it up with surprises every now and then it’ll be even more effective.

Don’t call it “work” – its a “game”!

Any activity will be more fun if you approach it like you would approach playing a game! So if you’re going to do rhythm clapping for example, instead of saying “Let’s do some rhythm work”…. say “Lets play a rhythm game!” with a big smile on your face! You’ll be amazed at the difference one small change to the way you describe it makes!

Always have plenty of “spares” up your sleeve!

Whenever you’re lesson planning make sure that you keep plenty of material in reserve, and always have far more than you need for each lesson. This isn’t that hard – just have a couple of songs that you know well that you can pull out if you need them, and a few music theory worksheets that you know will be fun and easy.

Your music lesson plans will be much more fun and enjoyable for your students with a couple of these simple ideas.

Well thankfully times have changed, and (we hope) that piano teachers no longer plan to teach with a ruler as their main means of correcting students!

However, a new type of Music Lessons have evolved over the last few years: These things that are part educational, and very much sold to the entertainment market – they are computer games.

Certainly there is some worth in games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band When you are playing through the songs it can really feel like you are playing the instrument.

Perhaps the best thing about games like this is that they give an opportunity to play instruments to people who otherwise wouldn’t. Thousands of people have had the chance to feel what its like to play “fur elise” on the piano, even if its just in their own lounge room.

Of course if you are serious about playing an instrument then these games are not and should never be your main source of tuition.

However together with lessons from a teacher these games can provide invaluable assistance. They certainly shouldn’t be written off as having no educational value.

If you are learning to play the guitar the game can be used to help you learn the structure and form of the songs, and then you can take it to your teacher and learn the correct riffs and chords.

The drum beats which are in the Rock Band game are fairly close to real drum patterns, however the layout of the drum kit isn’t quite the same as a real one.

It can also be helpful for piano students to use a computer game such as Piano Wizard. With this software you can attach a real electric piano to the computer via MIDI and play the notes on the screen in real time.

Some things to help you choose a music game:

It is best if you can use a Real Instrument as the controller for the game. With piano this is easy, as you can simply use a MIDI hooked up keyboard, however its much more difficult (and expensive!) with guitar and drum based games.

Look for games where the song structure, chords and keys are as close as possible to the original songs as possible. You may need to ask a teacher or other music professional to check your music game songs and see if they are completely correct before using them

It is exciting to be at this stage of this technology, because in a few years there will be lots more games that use real instruments as their controllers. Then there will be a lot more educational value in them.

Submitted by Margi Diab

Submitted by Nicolene Turnbow

Learning about the parts of the instruments is easy if you play this game: play Pin the Parts on the Cello or or Double Bass (a variation on Pin the Tail on the Donkey). In this game, blindfolded participants attempt to pin paper instrument parts (for example the scroll or endpin) on a picture of a double bass or a cello.

Another fun game is to have the students collect objects or pictures of different sizes (e.g., tree, car, mobile phone, ball, train etc.)The students then have to speak or show their pairs of objects and indicate the relative size relationships with the words double bass(for large) or cello(for smaller)e.g. baseball, beach ball would be cello, double bass, and train, feather would be double bass, cello This will help students remember the relative sizes of the instruments, which students often have trouble remembering. If you have already covered the violin and viola, you can extend this game to include all four string instruments, i.e., comparing violin with cello and so on.

These are just an excerpt from the music lesson plans available from the fun music company

Here are a few excellent pieces featuring the cello and double bass:

Camille Saint-Saens, Carnival of the Animals, XIV. The Swan (featuring solo cello). Several commercial recordings are available, but note that the recording with Leonard Bernstein as narrator features double bass instead of cello.

Edgar Meyer, Double Concerto for Double Bass, Cello, and Orchestra (available on CD or as mp3 download from Amazon.com).

Elgar Cello Concerto, first movement