Ten Tips for Teaching Early Childhood Music

Great Songs for Elementary General Music 

​Sample Lesson Plan 

Ten Tips for Teaching Early Childhood Music
Adapted from Katalin Forrai, “Music in Preschool”
Brendan Hogan, David A. Ellis Elementary

Joyful Experiences

1. Encourage a child’s interest and love of music through singing games, simple songs, and rhymes.  A child’s direct experience and active involvement is more important and developmentally appropriate than the teaching of abstract concepts.
   
2. Play games!  Children relive their experiences through games--”the work of the young child is play”-- and the social- emotional aspect of the games is more important than a teaching purpose, as they can ease a child’s tensions, and encourage his/ her emotional stability, comfort, and interest.  When students are relaxed, and focused on something besides singing, they are less self-conscious.
   
3. Games are unique experiences for every child and involve imagination and fantasy.  They may involve touch and personal contact and should be voluntary: very often a child in a distant corner of the room is humming along.
   
4. An early childhood music class should be no longer than one half hour.  
   

Materials

1. Carefully select song materials to fall within the students’ range (generally of a Major 6 above C or D for age 4, and expanding at age 5 and 6).
   
2. Use simple songs such as echo songs, call and response songs, and songs with a limited range.
   
3. Puppets, pictures, and other props that incorporate all of the senses can help teach concepts like soft and loud, fast and slow, and high and low.  They are also useful for putting children at ease.
   

Teacher’s Role

1. Sing for your students.  Children are exposed to music that is recorded and played in the background of their lives.  They want to see, hear, know and like the performer of a song. The closing of a class can be an ideal time for singing for your students to help calm them down and ease transitions.
   
2. Limit use of accompaniment so that students do not depend on an instrument as a crutch for singing.  Once students sing independently and in tune, do not sing with your students. Use students as peer models for singing, and include opportunities for solo and group singing and respectful listening.
   
3. Encourage free, spontaneous singing and improvisation to motivate a child’s creativity.