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Music Teaching Ideas for Pre-Primary Classes
By janice | May 10, 2010
Just last week, a very experienced teacher of 14 years with junior classes and friend of mine asked about teaching a difficult class in at the pre-school level. You probably know about the type of class I am talking about here. It’s the class which is constantly excited, but fidgety, calling out, making noises and touching each other when they just shouldn’t be. .. It’s just so frustrating and it’s the lesson we usually dread…..as my friend put it , It’s a “nightmare lesson!”
My friend opened a Facebook Discussion about it and there was some fantastic suggestions which is definitely worth a look at.
Here are a few suggestions of my own, highlights from the discussion and extra links to websites which may be a helpful start . But further to this, lets keep the ideas coming . Feel free to add your own ideas, links to websites and any other information which is useful in teaching music to difficult pre-primary classes:
Songs and Resources for Pre-Primary Children:
“An Adelaide business called ‘A Musical Child‘ have a fantastic selection of resources for this age. The songs are based on traditional children’s songs, sometimes with a modern twist and are grouped into 1-3 yr old and 3-5 yr old categories. They are engaging and appeal to children without being to ‘hyped up’ so a calming feel can be kept in the classroom.” - Sonja Mercer
If you’re looking for some classical background music which is easy to do various activities to and has a calming effect, I’ve always found this “Classic kids” Cd (the cover is not really an indication of the age group for this music, I’ve used these songs for children as old as 5 and just never show them the cover!) to have a great selection for this age group. I’ve used this Cd to do pre-primary drawing activities( Flight of the Bumble Bee and I danced with a Mosquito), music appreciation(ie: William Tell -horse riding, The Swan- fish and The Elephant- being different types of Dinosaurs), ball rolling (Perpetuam Mobile), bubble blowing (the Swan), percussion playing( Shephards Hey, Galop, Show People) and marching activities(Radetsky’s March, The Washington Post)
“Eric Jensen has some great Cd’s specifically targets music for work time energy and calm down..you just really need one cd with a variety”.- Lisa Lohr
Expectations:
“I found it helpful to lower my expectations for the class and treat them more like a pre-k class and that has helped immensely but some days I still want to tear my hair out. I find the more I can surprise them, the better the class goes.”- Heather Barlow
“A little trick. If they start to get rowdy inappropriately, we have meditation time where the sit for two minutes and listen to soothing classical music, then we talk about it after. They love it”.-Marsha Davis Wall
Teaching one set of genre of music becomes very boring. But changing the music genre can become very exciting and eager to learn more of who, what and where and time of piece.- Pauline Herbert
“I find that having a lot of different activities in a class period helps: if you keep changing the activity: they love having different things to do! I vary a song with a movement/dance activity with instruments: fast varied with slower, etc.”- Margo Rainone
“Fidgety primary classes need lots and lots of movement and tons of activities planned. I would say you need to be prepared to switch gears every two minutes and if their attention lasts longer, then go with it. I have also found that having the attentive kids get the instruments (orff) first often gets the fidgeters to settle quicker or they’ll miss their chance to play!”- Doreen McBride Fraccaro
Activity Suggestions:
For this teaching situation the focus of the activities suggested here is to keep a surprise around every corner, while keeping a controlled atmosphere and keeping the children motivated. The activities listed here are more like pattern interrupts rather than teaching ideas and are great for keeping difficult classes on task.
“Distract their attention from the music and each other for a short time by getting them to investigate the other properties of the instruments. So things like “is your cymbal cold? Feel it against your face? Can you put one cymbal on your head and one on your hand/knee? Are they balancing? Well done Jimmy etc. Can you make a T with you claves? Can your hands make a nest for your egg shakers to sit it?” Just take their minds off of everything for a minute and give them a really tricky physical task to focus on. Plus if the instrument parts are separate they don’t make noise – I can’t take credit for these tricks, learn’t them from a very clever 1-5 yr old music teacher I know “- Sonja Mercer
I teach Kindermusik and the philosophy of following the child leads to a very positive learning experience. A masterful teacher is able to change up their lesson plan to fit the mood and direction of the class. Implementing ‘Brain Gym’ techniques is very effective in bringing focus together with learning. “Rub your fingers together, now rub your ears from top to bottom” just one way to open cognitive pathways and focus listening behavior.- Julie Morris Stewart
Bubble Blowing along to calm Music can be fun for the children, surprises them and can be a great distraction . “The Swan” and “Under the Sea” both work well with young classes. I always held one bubble blowing pot and blew the to the children as they caught them. As the classes got more experienced, they loved to hold a bubble pot themselves and blow them(I would only have a very small amount of bubble mixture at the bottom of the pot or have very small pots!). The other trick I had with this activity was to let my class know that it’s nearly finished about half way through the song.If their attention span couldn’t cope with the whole song, I would simply fade the music out. I know this activity sounds very basic, but I had children asking me to do this every week and it works well as an incentive activity with a whole group in a circle!
Ball Rolling can be good calmer and can help teach pre-primary children to wait their turn as well as helping with instruction listening. I usually used calming music like this Disney Lullaby Cd, – where we could sit in a circle and I could say roll the ball, catch the ball over the music very easily. As children get more controlled with activity then ”Perpetuum Mobile” is a great faster classical song that they could roll the ball, throw the ball or even bounce the ball as a whole class or in pairs as they become more controlled as a class.
Learning to draw music notes to a selection of Classical Music, can help with an easily distracted class. My personal favorites were the classical pieces “I danced with a Mosquito” and “Flight of the Bumble Bee”. After a while, the children would know what activity these songs represented and if the class was getting too distracted or busy, I would just pop it on to let the pace of the lesson change and we’d settle down to do a five minute activity on basic music note drawing.
This Pre-Primary Worksheet starts off by simply drawing circles and is the first of many in this resource called the Junior Musicianship System which is designed particularly for for the fidgety, distracted pre- primary class.
In a busy class, you could simply start by drawing circles in the air before even getting the worksheets out. Practicing drawing in the air, or on each others backs or with finger on the page first can be a surprise for some classes rather than going straight to the page to draw and will help develop a better result on the paper when they get a pencil in their hand.
Games and Other resources:
Games can be great for keeping difficult groups on task especially if they come towards the end of a lesson.
A simple game such as Musical Memory Match works well in a large group as a starting point. You could use musical notation , letters or instruments as your cards and the object of the game is to make a match. As long as you find a way to make everyone a winner at this age group , it is a great way of learning, especially with fidgety classes that don’t have a long attention span, without having to give much explanation.
All you need to do is place all flash cards face down in the middle of the playing area. Each Player uncovers two musical match cards. If they are identical then that player keeps them (or they can be given to the teacher so that it saves any arguments or competition). Play continues until all matches are uncovered. At the end count up the matches. If you want to get some free musical notation flashcard designs, just go to musical-clipart.com.
Other musical versions of traditional games to play with a large pre-primary class could include Musical Bingo, Musical Go Fish or Stop it’s Wrong. Templates for these games and many others are included with the Fun Music Company Products–Printable Music Games
“40 Lifesavers for the Music Teacher” is a 58 page ebook and is packed full of useful ideas for music teachers, drawn from active music teachers all over the world. Inside the book is a vast selection of games for the classroom teacher and classroom management strategies specific to teaching in the music classroom.
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Topics: Classroom Music, Games, kindergarten music, lesson ideas, music lesson plans, Music Resources for young children, music teacher resources, Music Teaching, Music Theory
Creating some competition within the group might help. Offer prizes for good behaviour and listening, or keep a score board.
Hi,I teach children btween 2 & 6 years. I play the guitar most of the time & usually get the ‘busy child “to come & sit next to me – there is usually at least 1 busy child per class. I even sometimes get the child to sit on my lap & play the guitar with him encircled between my arms & the guitar!!!They love to feel that its a special privelege to be next to the teacher so i would ask them ‘May I sit next to you?”at times. I also get that child to hold my box of instruments,collect the instruments or hold my music – keeps them busy, feeling important & still.
They also love pictures that relate to the song.
I have told the Nutcracker story with the music playing in the background to some very young children with great success.
I usually hand out instruments to children who know or have learnt the song quickly so they are motivated to participate.
Thanks for the other ideas.
Penny
I keep a whistle around my neck. The children know if I blow it they have stop whatever they are doing, stand up and turn around 3 times and sit down. As they get used to that, I add different movements to match blown rhythm patterns. I also introduce–only if necessary–a “the teacher is getting really mad and you better stop everthing and be really quiet” whistle. Works every time!
An activity I did with pre-k, k, and first grade was to take the heavy paper sentence strips and small note pads shaped like different one and two syllable words. I cut them to fit the strips and glued them on in four beat patterns. On the back I put stems and beams to form the pattern in tahs and tee-tees. (put on upside down so that when strips are flipped they are right side up). Two syllable picutes can be cut in half and glued on just a little apart so they know there are two sounds. Ex. bee, bee, flo-wer, bee. Pattern may be clapped or played on instruments.