We're going to talk about imperfect strategies for getting organized as a music teacher or a music therapist. On this blog post, I’m going to share five simple ways that you can organize your early childhood music planning.

The early childhood music planning process is deeply connected with just regular life for me, and we know that whatever works for me may not work for you. Everybody is different. So, I'm going to share with you these five hacks that have worked for me over the last couple of years but feel free to take or leave what might not work for your specific circumstances.

Lesson planning did not come naturally to me

I have to give you the caveat that the reason that I have these hacks is because I was a terrible planner. I always had aspirations to be a great planner but I was largely an improvisational music therapist and for the most part, working one-on-one, following the child's lead. I would improvise songs with kids, we would write songs during sessions, etc. And then, what ended up happening is that I found myself moving across the country, working in a new setting being a music teacher (preschool to third grade) and all of a sudden I had about 24 three, four and five year olds in front of me. My improvisational, let's-make-things-up-in-the-moment style just suddenly did not work. In fact, it was really the exact opposite of what I needed to do in this new setting.

I started to realize that instead of improvising my lessons, I needed to find existing songs, I needed to plan and I needed to have an idea of what I'm doing.

I remember the first day of school, with my first early childhood group, literally looking up at the clock, going through songs I had in my back pocket. And it had been like, eight minutes, I was running out of songs and we still had almost another 20 minutes to go!! This is actually why I started Music for Kiddos, because I started looking for songs and resources and I couldn't find one central place to help me high-quality children’s songs and resources and to help me plan for my early childhood groups.

All of that to say that these kind of processes and systems came out of necessity for me because I was bad at it, and I really had to be intentional because lesson planning is not a natural skill for me.

Five ways to simplify your early childhood music planning

1. Create a bank of songs

This sounds really simple, but if you haven't actually done this, I would encourage you to actually try it. What you can do is basically create a bank of songs like a brain dump; writing down all of the songs that you can without needing to look up the lyrics and without needing to look up the chords.

Once you've done that, take a look at your list of songs and make sure that they're actually songs that are useful, that kids respond to and that they're very engaging. Let’s call these your go-to songs.

I think this is really important to do because, I don't know about you, but by the time January rolls around I’m asking myself “what did I do last year?” and because my lesson planning sometimes exists on things like sticky notes and they just kind of disappear. So, if I have this list of 15 to 20 solid go-to songs, I know that I have a good foundation for my preschool music curriculum for the rest of the year.

After you create this song bank, you can add seasonally appropriate songs and thematic songs. If you have a larger bank than 15 to 20 songs, that's great! Now you can start separating them into themes, seasons, prop songs, movement songs, relaxation songs, etc.

The purpose of your bank of songs is to fill in gaps in lesson plans, and to have them in your “back pocket” for when you just completely need to change gears in your class, because that happens.

2. Develop a “standard class format” that also has some flexibility built in

I say “standard class format” to emphasize that there's a lot of flexibility here.

When I lesson plan, for example, there's always a book, usually the second to last song is some kind of quiet song where we're kind of bringing the energy down right before the goodbye song. And usually, the first couple of songs are more academically challenging, cause that's when kids have their fresh energy, followed by two to three movement songs, a book and a prop or instruments

Some music teachers like to do movement right at the beginning because kids are coming in from recess. It really depends on your specific situation BUT give yourself a “standard format.

If you’ll like to read more about how I plan and facilitate my early childhood music classes, check out this blog post.

Having this format reduces the need for me to come up with something from scratch every time.

3. Embrace repetition and get really, really comfortable with it

We're specifically talking about early childhood music, and kids in early childhood music thrive with repetition. It's good to remind ourselves that music is very complex. It has a lot of layers to it. It has the rhythm, the song structure, the song form and the song structure. It has the melody, it has the harmony, it has the vibe and the feeling. It has the cadences, it has the harmonic structure. Oh, did I even mention lyrics? There's so much going on in a single song!

Even if it sounds simple, kids need repetition so that these various layers of music can actually be processed.

I have had the experience more times than I can count where I will bring a song one week and I will think to myself “they're gonna really, really like this one”, and then I bring that song and I get a blank stare, wide-eyed look from the kids. I’m sure that has happened to you too, right?

It makes me think that they didn't like that song. But then I come the next week and I decide to try it again, and the kids would be singing some of the lyrics and loving the song! So I have learned to always bring songs twice. Never just do them once because by the second time, you may be surprised by their reaction.

It makes you realize how much processing is required for kids to be able to grasp and participate in music.

So if you get the blank stare, just remember there is so much happening in music and kids need time to process that and we can lean into repetition because kids’ brains thrive on it and they need it.

4. Plan just once a month

Commit to trying to plan just one time a month'; set aside a dedicated time to plan, use a class format that makes a lot of sense to you and then have a plan in place. Plan a whole month at once, don't do a week at a time. And the way that you can do that is by leaning into repetition, having a song bank and some reliable resources that you can lean on.

It may take some initial work the first couple of times that you do it, but once you get the process going, you should be able to plan these early childhood classes very, very quickly for an entire month at a time.

5. Keep it simple

Consider the concept of “deciding once” (someone told me this is a quote from the Lazy Genius podcast but I've actually never listened to it. It's on my docket!). Sometimes when you have so many options, you are just stuck in like decision paralysis.

I'm gonna give you a non-musical example: A few years back, maybe like four or five years back, I realized that there was one shoe company that I bought shoes from that every time I got shoes from them, I like how they fit, they were comfortable and I liked them. So I stopped buying shoes anywhere else because I was doing all of this scrolling on many websites and guessing about sizes and fit. When I decided that 99% of the time I was gonna buy shoes from this one shoe company because they worked for me, it freed up brain space for me. And I thought, “what if I do that for other things too?”

It's kind of a silly example, but I can't even tell you, this concept of deciding once is really helpful.

Now apply that to early childhood music planning. Some examples:

In the month of February, we are always going to cover the topics of community, friendship and Black History Month.
In March, we're always going to do frogs, rain and rainbows, etc.
Assign an instrument for each month.
Assign a prop for each month.
Etc.

This strategy will help so that you're not always reinventing the wheel, so that you have a plan and to reduce those options. You're keeping it simple.