Preschool Music

Music seems to be a mostly auditory experience. I strive to make it a full body experience in my classroom. Whether it’s learning a new song in a different language or trying to understand the difference between singing, screaming, and talking, my music classes focus on making music a time of discovery for these students.

A typical music lesson with the PreK classes starts off with a sort of show-and-tell. For example, this past week I brought in the electric guitar that I use for concerts of my own and the students asked any questions that popped up in their mind. This creates a natural way to talk about the musicality and physical properties of the instrument without boring them with a lot of one-sided talking.

From there we sing a few fan favorites – such as “der Bananenboogie” – to get some wiggles out. During most of these songs I have a favorite activity to do, such as dancing or clapping or acting out the words. Every song that I teach has a different activity associated with it.

Along with an inquisitive warm-up and a fun-filled singing time, I like to teach a new song every week, or at least a new part to a song sung previously. Right now, we are working on a variation of a German classic, “Ich bin ein Musikante.” The past two music lessons, I have used that song to introduce the idea of instrument families to the classes and we will be adding a third group this week.

Every lesson has the kids asking questions, singing loudly, jumping and dancing around and also learning a new aspect of music. I know they’re having a ton of fun in my class because I know I am!