Listening in a group

Are you nervous about starting teaching music in preschool? Why is it that you lack confidence? My guess is that you think you are not musical yourself.  You don’t like singing in front of people.

If that’s you then let me suggest a short lesson plan that gets you out of the limelight and lets the confident child-singers shine.  Once it’s no longer “all about you” you might find that your reticence disappears.

7 Steps to Success

1.  Sit on your favourite story time chair and gather the children into a seated group so they can all see you clearly.

2. Introduce the idea that we are going to have a concert and that any child who wants to can come up the front right next to you and sing a song while everyone listens.

3. Once you have discovered a child who can sing convincingly to the group, ask everyone to sing their song again and keep that child at your side to be the model singer or music leader.

4. Continue in this manner with other volunteers until you have made a mental list of four or five songs to work with and at least one child to be your “co-teacher”.  It may take longer than one session to get songs you can work with. Prepare to be surprised at the song lyrics some children know!

5.  Later, spend some of you planning time finding those songs lyrics in your CD collections of favourite children’s songs. Then turn them into wall charts of lyrics.

6. Next you need to work out what kind of activity suits each song.  They might work best as finger plays, hand and body percussion songs,  or you might find reading resources or illustrated story books to suit them.  You might also play instruments to them, make up circle dances or dramatise them.   A selection of different activities is a great basis for a varied and interesting music session.  (You are well on your way to planning an excellent preschool music program.)

7.  Success brings success – you and your talented children, the music leaders,  will soon be having fun running music sessions together because we are all born musical- but some adults just need to find that out through musical play with children.

If you want any inspiration in finding music activities to do with children aged from twelve months to five years have a look here.