new ideas for kindergarten lessons

Although I have my tried-and-true lessons that I've gathered over the years, I love finding new material and ideas to mix things up. Some don't work out the way I had hoped, but most end up being a lot of fun and bring a fresh spark to my lessons! Today I wanted to share some of the new material and lessons I tried with kindergarten this year that I loved.

I never have enough songs and material for kindergarten and early childhood. It's just the nature of the beast I guess- with such active bodies and short attention spans, you need a lot of material just for one 30 minute lesson! So when I found this book back in the fall I was so excited:

This "Preschool Songbook" by Rebecca Donaldson is full of little gems that are great for kindergarten and younger. There are several songs about winter, fall, fruit, and more. My favorite is the "Pomegranate Song". There's even a short little ditty about losing a tooth! There are ideas included for expanding the songs within a lesson as well, by adding verses, changing lyrics, and so on. Here is a full list of the songs and speech pieces included in the book:

I loved having new material to throw into my lessons to fit the seasons. The fall songs were a big hit with my kids, as was the snow song.

If you're interested, you can check out the book here.

Another new idea I loved this year was this song that I came across on Pinterest:

I modified it slightly by singing instead of speaking the "up, down" part (and singing the whole song in a higher key for little voices!), but I ended up using this song as the opener for every.single.lesson. this school year with kindergarten. It was a perfect way to start the lesson singing right away, get them seated, let them move a little, and reinforce left and right all at the same time! Loved it. I will definitely be using it again next year!

My other favorite new idea for kindergarten this year was the "Pass the Pumpkin" song I used at Halloween. I got the idea from Aimee at "O for Tuna Orff", and my kids absolutely loved the game to accompany the song!

I love that it's in a minor key and has a nice clear steady beat. I just did the simple passing game with the song, but Aimee has tons of ideas to go with the song, including instruments and notation. Check out her blog post here.

Did you try any new ideas with your kindergarten or early childhood classes? I'd love to hear about them! Leave a comment below, or link up your own blog post if you're a blogger.

An InLinkz Link-up

Want more? Subscribe here to the Organized Chaos newsletter and get music teacher ideas and resources sent straight to your inbox!