What do you do when you’ve been given the job of planning the music sessions for the babies and toddlers in your daycare centre? Panic, right!
Next step is to ask people around you for advice and they’ll say search online, so you do that and find it’s a maze!
Here’s a way to get your head around it by searching for 12 different activities. It’s the lesson plan we use to run lessons or sessions when we go into a daycare centre.
The links will take you to the Musical Child resources or you can search specifically for other activities using the underlined terms and get out of the maze.
- Sing a “hello song” naming each child. It fulfills the social convention of greeting everyone for the day.
- Sing something with a bit of bounce and excitement to get them jigging on their bottoms.
- Do action songs that are games and tickles to stimulate the touch sensory pathways.
- Hand out or let them come and get an instrument e.g. sleigh bells to play while you repeat a song three times. Make sure you put out only one kind of instrument, otherwise you overload their hearing.
- Clear the instruments while you sing a Pack Away Song, another social convention of clearing up before doing something new.
- Give out another different instrument, such as rhythm sticks and sing a song with a strong rhythm while experimenting with ways to play the instrument.
- Switch to whole body movement, we always use a horsie song at this point to encourage strong loco-motor activity and dramatic play.
- A circle dance is beneficial and fun if you have enough adults to keep it together.
- Following you is one of the ways they learn so perform whole body actions to a mimcry song and encourage them to copy.
- A short rest is good after all that activity so lullabies work well at this juncture.
- Now they are calm it’s a good time to use books to tell stories. We recommend nursery rhymes with tunes as a great way to finish a music session. We always do two nursery rhymes and sing them at least twice each.
- We always sing a Goodbye Song to let the children know music time is over. Then it’s time for hugs!
So that’s it, 12 activities to make up a long music session. You can do them all or select a few and run several short sessions throughout the week. Be sure to come back and leave a reply below. We’d love to hear from you.
Remember, there’s nothing quite like music!
thanks for this concise list. I am a music educator, but trained in K-12. I was asked to take over the position of preschool music camp director for a 3 day camp this summer, and am compiling activities based around our theme of creation. This is helpful to structure the lessons I am preparing for my teachers! thanks!
Could you share some of your ideas?
Glad you like the list of activities. Music education what I have done for a living for more years than I need to say. It’s wonderful for the “lone blogger” to get a positive response. Good luck with the camp preparations. Three days of music-making should make a powerful difference to those children and to the teachers too.
thanks for the tips! I’m a Music Together teacher but I’m also working up to teaching music classes in day cares and I think the format will need to be quite different. Your explanations and flow of a class are very helpful.
Oh, you’re going to love it Bethany. Young children are so sophisticated in what they hear and love musically and they respond physically so you can see if it’s working for them straight away. Keep in touch, I’m happy to advise you.
Need some advice teaching 5 and 6 year olds.
Try this format Bashnee, there’s plenty to keep the 6 year-olds on their toes.
https://preschoolmusiclessonplans.com/music-lesson-plans-kids-daycare-plan-preschool/