Music For Kiddos Podcast
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I went through my winter singable books and I picked the three easiest to learn. They're literally board books! They are super simple books and I’m sharing them with you on this blog post. Two of them are Sandra Boynton books, which as you know, are short, simple and easy to grasp. My goal is that if you just need ideas to do bring to your preschool or kindergarten music groups, classes or sessions over the next few weeks, you'll order these (they're like five or $6 each), you'll listen to the songs a couple of times, and then you'll have something for your classes that is brand new, that the kids will absolutely love.
I’m going to keep it simple and share with you three winter books that you can use. You can listen to the melodies I use along with these winter music books on episode 51 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast (time stamps are included below!)
Woodland Dance
The first book I’m sharing with you is Woodland Dance by Sandra Boynton. Sandra has a number of existing songs for her books. There's actually an album of Sandra Boynton’s books that have been put to song; it’s not really my favorite album— some of them feel a little bit cheesy to me, but it is a really good starting point. The album it’s a nice thing to have so that you can play along with the book if you've lost your voice, you can't really sing for any given reason or your voice just needs some rest.
This book has a lot of dark greens, there are pine cones at the front, there's all these woodland creatures. So it's really perfect for January, February, March, depending on where you are.
Listen to the melody I use on minute 4:20 of episode 51 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast.
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? was written by Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by Eric Carl.
They are the same creators of the popular book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You Hear? A lot of people have really great melodies for these books but choose to do this A B, AB, A B form to keep it a little bit more interesting.
I keep it really simple by only doing the AB AB and not changing it up too much, but I changed it up a little bit. The way that I do that is the way that the cadence happens at the end.
The nice thing about this book is that can be pretty easily paired to instruments. So you can have a child be the zebra or the boat constrictor, and they can either just make the sounds with an instrument, with their mouth, with a body percussion, they can make the gesture of a snake and make a sound, etc. It's fun because that encourages them to listen for their part.
Listen to my version of this melody on minute 7:16 of episode 51 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast.
Snuggle Puppy
The last book I have for you is Snuggle Puppy by Sandra Boynton. The melody I use is not my original melody. This is the melody from the Sandra Boynton’s album. It’s a very, very cute song and great for the month of February. This song works really well online because kids can go and grab a stuffed animal that can be their snuggle puppy.
If you're doing this 1:1 or in a group, it almost sounds like you are singing a love song to them but you can make it about pretending to hold a stuffed animal or holding an actual stuffed animal, maybe kids can talk about their actual dogs or their grandparents' dogs or their neighbor's dogs, etc.
There's a lot of different ways that you can incorporate this into a dog theme, a pet theme, a love theme because it's very adaptable.
Listen to my version of this melody on minute 10:09 of episode 51 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast.
I picked these three books to share with you because they're widely available. They are very inexpensive too, about $5 or $6 dollars and the melodies are incredibly simple. I hope this gives you ideas that you can use for your preschool and kindergarten lesson plans during these winter months.
Listen to this episode of the Music For Kiddos Podcast!
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