Food Themed Elementary Music Lesson Activities

I have very mixed feelings about US American Thanksgiving as a holiday, as I'm sure many others do, but one way to incorporate seasonal themes that will draw students in and keep things fresh in November (or, really, any time of year) is to incorporate a theme of food! Today I'm sharing some of my favorite food themed lesson activities for elementary music class that you can easily add to your lessons no matter what you may be teaching.

A quick note about students experiencing food insecurity: I've found that focusing on discussing our favorite foods, rather than asking students to discuss specific things they eat for specific occasions etc, keeps it positive for everyone. My entire school building receives free breakfast and lunch and I do have students experiencing food insecurity, and I also have students who won't be having a big family gathering or special meal over Thanksgiving break because their family is not together, their caregivers have to work, they don't recognize US American Thanksgiving, etc. But in my experience even the ones who struggle the most with food insecurity are happy to talk about their favorite foods. Don't assume everyone is having a special meal for Thanksgiving (or any other time of year), but in my opinion you also don't need to shy away from the topic of food in general either.

A lot of these activities are things I keep in my back pocket for when schedules get weird before a break, or to add into a heavier lesson so my students and I don't have to think so hard when we're tired. But some of them are just a different twist on skills and concepts I'm already teaching in different grade levels that just make the lesson more fun!

Canon and Partner Singing

I love using the Fast Food Canon to introduce canon singing to my 3rd graders this time of year. The students always love this song and it's so easy to learn! I also introduce partner singing with 4th graders, and the Fruit Canon (it's called a canon but it's really best done as a partner song as shown in this video) and Fish and Chips and Vinegar song are some of my favorite ways to introduce partner singing with them as well. 

You Name It

My favorite Thanksgiving reference to throw into my lessons the day before or after break is the "You Name It" song. This body percussion play along is easy enough for younger students but also engaging enough for even my oldest 6th graders, and it's a great activity to use as a class opener or warm-up activity to get everyone focused and having fun.

Rhythm Play-along Videos

Of course play-along videos are always an easy way to incorporate a specific theme. The "time for pie" videos have iconic notation, quarter/ paired eighths/ quarter rest, and sixteenth/eighth combination rhythm versions that I've used with Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 5th grade, and the "peanut butter vs jelly" duet mode videos have the class split into 2 sides and read 2 different sets of rhythms which is great for working on ensemble skills while reviewing rhythm reading- there are versions with quarter/ paired eighths/ quarter rest, added half and whole notes, and dotted quarter/ single eighth note versions which I use with 2nd, 3rd, and 6th grade (so that's a play-along option for almost every grade right there!). 

Mi, Sol, La

I love using the song "Pizza, Pizza, Daddy-O" to review mi, sol, and la with 2nd grade because it gets students singing the same melodic pattern over and over again while giving them the chance to be up and moving. After they learn the song I have students aurally identify the solfege of the repeated phrase and notate it on the staff. I also have students come and lead the song themselves and make up their own dance moves at the end so it's a quick and fun way to assess their independent singing without them even realizing! 

Steady Beat

The chant "Chop Chop Chippity Chop" is one of my favorite ways to practice steady beat with Kindergarten. I ask different students to choose what else to add to the soup and we act out the whole process of getting each item out of the fridge/ pantry, washing it off (if applicable) and putting it on the cutting board before starting the chant. I'm always amazed at how many times students will beg to repeat this over and over, and we come up with some pretty unusual soup combinations!

Rap Flow

One easy way to practice flow is to have students list a bunch of their favorite foods (or limit it to one category like desserts or vegetables) and practice rapping them with a beat in the background and try to match the beat. For older students, you can have them practice rapping with different numbers of syllables to each beat using the same word sequence as well. This post has more detail about how I teach beginning rap skills, including flow, and links to some rudiment exercises and tracks you can use for this!

Improvisation

One of my new favorite hand clapping games for upper elementary is the Argentinian game "Tutuca". Students take turns saying a 4-beat pattern with any combination of 4 Argentinian snack names and then the class repeats the pattern with hand gestures that are assigned to each word. I've used it as a way to get students improvising (because the leader doesn't get time to think before they say their pattern) but it's honestly just a great way to get squirrelly preteens to concentrate, and my students were intrigued by the different snacks they hadn't heard of before! Here's the blog post with the game demonstration and all the details on the lesson activities I did with it.

Food is such a fun theme to use any time of year, and it's an easy one to use with almost any concept with any grade level! There are so many other great songs about different kinds of foods as well, and activities I've done over the years with a food theme. What are your favorite food themed songs and lesson activities for elementary music? Let me know in the comments!

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Lesson Warmups to Practice Instruments of the Orchestra

I've been using student-led warmups at the beginning of my elementary general music lessons for years now and I am a big fan! I've gotten a lot of questions about the warmups I do and how I do them, so today I'm sharing my favorite warmups to practice identifying the instruments of the orchestra and the instrument families.

I have shared tons of lesson warmup ideas over the years (I've linked the others at the end of this post if you're looking for more ideas) and somehow it never occurred to me until this year that I could use warmups to review instrument names and families. Identifying instruments is one of those things that I focus on in a short unit each year and students are very good at identifying the instruments by the end of each unit, but then I don't talk about it much the rest of the year and by the time it comes around again the following year it seems like I spend the first week just trying to catch them up on what they knew a year ago, so incorporating this into warmups is the perfect way to throw in some quick review every now and then the rest of the year so they don't forget what they've learned.

You can read more about why I do student-led warmups and how I manage the logistics of warmups in general in this post, but essentially I have a small group of 2-4 students who are assigned to lead the warmup / opening activity / do now at the beginning of class. The idea is to keep it quick, easy, and low-pressure so everyone can be successful right from the beginning of the lesson.

1. Name the instrument

Each leader chooses one instrument photo from the slide, and the other students have to name the instrument. I do this sometimes with representative instruments from each of the 4 families, or use a slide that has all of the main instruments from just one family for the leaders to choose from.

2. Name the family

Similar to “name the instrument”, each leader chooses one instrument photo and the other students has to name which family that instrument belongs to. When I’m first introducing instrument families in 2^nd grade, I will do something similar but instead of having all of the instruments scattered randomly around the page I’ll use a slide that shows the instruments grouped by family and have the leaders choose one family to point to for the class to identify.

3. Name the instrument sound

Have a few different audio examples of individual instruments playing a short excerpt called up on the computer (or any other audio playing device) and in order, then ask each leader to choose a number (so if you have 10 audio examples ask the leaders to pick a number between 1 and 10) and the class identifies the name of the instrument they hear.

4. Instrument charades

Each leader takes turns pretending to play an instrument, and the rest of the class has to guess what instrument they are pretending to play.

5. Describe the instrument

Each leader takes turns giving one hint at a time to describe an instrument without saying the name of the instrument or the instrument family, acting it out, or imitating the sound. After each hint one student tries to guess what instrument they are describing. If the guess is wrong the leader gives another hint and then they try again until they can correctly guess the instrument they are describing.

I have all of the visuals that I use for these, with the instrument photos, as well as all of my other lesson warmup activities for things like solfege, rhythm, steady beat, expressive vocabulary, and pitch letter names, in this set- it makes it so easy to just pull out the slides I want to use for that day's warmup without having to think or create anything from scratch. And you can read about all of my other lesson warmup activity ideas in this post. If you want to read more about how I teach instruments of the orchestra and how I sequence my instruction from Kindergarten through 6th grade, you can read all about what I do in this post.

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3 Songs in Spanish for Upper Elementary Music

I love using songs in Spanish in my elementary music lessons. I have a high percentage of Spanish-speaking students in my school, and the students who don't speak Spanish are still usually familiar enough with the language that it's easy for them to learn the lyrics and a fun way to learn some new vocabulary while practicing musical skills and concepts. Here are 3 Spanish language songs I use with my 5th and 6th grade classes year-round (not just during Hispanic Heritage Month!) to teach specific musical concepts.

1. El Mundo Es Mio

This is the only song by Bad Bunny I've found that's appropriate for elementary school, and it's worth using simply as a way to bring the music and artists many of the students are listening to into the classroom! But I love using it as a template for practicing flow and rap writing. These may not be skills you're used to seeing listed in an elementary music curriculum because most center skills and concepts from Western classical art music, but I believe they are very important to include in a well-rounded, inclusive, decolonized elementary music curriculum- you can read more about how I teach rap in elementary music in this post, and more about my thoughts on how to more authentically incorporate hip-hop into elementary music curriculum in this post.

If you aren't familiar, here is the song "El Mundo Es Mio". It has a very simple refrain that students can pick up immediately that translates to "the world is mine, the world is yours", and the rest of the lyrics basically are about believing in yourself/ don't listen to the haters. After introducing the song and learning the refrain, I have students each write an 8-beat rap about something they are proud of about themselves. I use this lesson after they have already been practicing flow for a bit, so I play the backing track for the song while they think and tell them to make sure their lyrics fit with the track. Then I have a few students rap their lines in a row and then have the whole class sing the refrain, then back to a few more students rapping their lines followed by the refrain until we go through the whole class. Because it's a slower beat students have an easier time fitting their lyrics with the track in a way that sounds good, and it's a great way to build classroom community because students naturally start hyping each other up during the whole activity. You can see more ways I used the song in my lessons to teach other musical concepts with different grade levels after his superbowl half time performance in this blog post.

2. Tutuca

I just discovered this Argentinian concentration game/ hand clapping song this year and I love using it to practice improvisation! Here's a demonstration of the game- basically each student takes turns saying a 4-beat phrase using a combination of 4 Argentinian snack names, and the class repeats it back with motions that are assigned to each snack name. All of this needs to be done on the steady beat. I used the game this year as a way to get students used to improvising 4-beat phrases by teaching them the game but modifying it slightly so they are not allowed to pause before they say their pattern (as they sometimes do in the demonstration video). We start very slow and have the class echo back the patterns without the motions- just the words- and then once they get used to it start speeding up and then add in the motions. You can read more about the game and other lesson ideas using it in this blog post.

3. Al Citron (aka Acitrón)

This is the most commonly-used song in elementary music circles on my list and it's perfect for introducing and practicing dotted quarter- single eighth rhythms. It's a Mexican passing game that is pretty simple for students to learn (read my tips for teaching passing games in this post) and gets my older students to experience and practice maintaining a steady beat while singing the song with the target rhythm in it, which is no small feat at this age! I have students learn the passing game first while I sing the song, and then once they've gotten the hang of the passing I have them add the singing. After getting the passing game going with the singing added in I have students identify where the notes fall with the beats in the first line of the song to discover the 1.5 beat dotted quarter note. You can read more about how I use the song in my lessons, as well as other activities I use to practice the dotted quarter note rhythm, in this blog post.

I hope this gives you some new ideas to incorporate more Spanish language into your upper elementary music lessons! There are plenty more that I've done but these are definitely my favorites to come back to every year. If you want to see all of the lesson ideas, choir songs, and performance ideas using Spanish (and many other languages) I've shared over the years, you can see them all listed by language here.

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3 Songs in Spanish for Kindergarten Music Lessons

I love using songs in Spanish in my elementary music lessons. I have a high percentage of Spanish-speaking students in my school, and the students who don't speak Spanish are still usually familiar enough with the language that it's easy for them to learn the lyrics and a fun way to learn some new vocabulary while practicing musical skills and concepts. Here are 3 Spanish language songs I use with my Kindergarten classes year-round (not just during Hispanic Heritage Month!) to teach specific musical concepts.

1. Ambos a Dos 

I use this song to practice identifying call and response songs. After they've learned echo songs and call and response songs and the definition of each, I have them listen to a recording of the song and hold up one finger when they hear one person singing alone, and hold up all their fingers when they hear a group singing. Then I ask them to figure out if the song is echo or call and response and have them listen and show their fingers again to pay attention to whether the 2 parts are the same or different, and they identify it as call and response. I show them how to walk and kick in a line to play the accompanying game and I move with the solo part while they move with the group part along with the recording. By the time they've done all of that they've heard the recording enough times to easily learn the first verse, so we sing it in call and response form by having the students sing the call (because the words are easier) and I sing the response. You can see links to the recordings I use, the video of the game, and more information on the song in this blog post.

2. De Colores

When I first did this lesson a few years ago with Kindergarten it was mostly just a quick bonus activity to incorporate a bit more Spanish language into my Hispanic Heritage Month lessons with Kindergarten without much curricular purpose, but I have come back to it every year since as a way to incorporate experience with triple meter and introduce the concept of echoing, and I could never have predicted how enchanted all of my students are with this little activity! It's also a great way to give my youngest students some familiarity with a very well-known song in many Spanish speaking countries- most years there is at least one Spanish speaking student who recognizes the song from learning it at home and is so excited to hear it at school. I show students this video (starting when the song begins) and tell students to sway with the music, then echo when they hear the color names. They are always so excited when they hear it switch to Spanish halfway through! I review the Spanish words for the colors after they do it the first time, then I hand out scarves to each student so we have all 6 of the mentioned colors, and I tell them to do it again but this time when we echo the name of their scarf color they should wave it in the air, and sway their scarf back and forth in the first part as well.

Some students will naturally start singing along the second time through as well because the words are on the screen in the video, but I don't spend any time teaching the song because the main purpose of the lesson activity is experiencing the triple meter feel with the swaying and introducing the term and practicing the skill of echoing with the color names.

3. Caminando Va

I love this song so much. You can head to this blog post for all of the recordings and lesson ideas I've done with different grade levels using this song, but for Kindergarten I use it to practice performing and identifying quarter and paired eighth notes. I teach them a fingerplay that includes clapping with the phrase "el caracolito" with 2 paired eighth notes followed by 2 quarter notes (see the full demonstration of the fingerplay with the clapping starting at minute 3 of this video), first by having them just follow my hands while I sing, then teaching them the singing as well. Once they've learned it, I break down the phrase we clapped one beat at a time and have them identify how many claps they did for each beat and notate it with paired eighth and quarter notes using rhythm cards like these DIY ones I made (and use all the time with multiple grades!). Because it's such a simple phrase it is a great introduction to rhythm dictation and an easy way for students to aurally identify rhythms after they've just been introduced. 

Once we've done that, I always finish by playing them the full recording by Marta Gomez that includes the fingerplay song at the beginning and then launches into a full-length song. We sing along with the opening fingerplay and then I tell them to grab a scarf and dance "like a snail enjoying the sunshine". The looks on their faces are priceless!

I hope this gives you some new ideas to incorporate more Spanish language into your Kindergarten music lessons! There are plenty more that I've done but these are definitely my favorites to come back to every year. If you want to see all of the lesson ideas, choir songs, and performance ideas using Spanish (and many other languages) I've shared over the years, you can see them all listed by language here.

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