Football Themed Elementary Music Lesson Activities

The Super Bowl is almost here and that means for many of our students, they have American football on the brain! Here are a few easy ways to tie in the theme of football in those days leading up to, or right after, the Super Bowl (or really any time during football season)!

Rhythm Play-alongs

There are some really fun rhythm play-along videos with a football theme that are a quick and easy way to review whatever note values students are working on. Ready GO Music has several with different rhythm combinations for different grade levels that I love, including everything from dotted quarter/ single eighths which I use with 6th grade, all the way to just quarter notes, which is a great lead-in to rhythm notation reading for Kindergarten this time of year.

Note Identification

I have used these videos from Music Maestra as part of sub plans several times to have my students practice identifying treble clef letter names, bass clef letter names, or just identifying line and space notes. There's even one that mixes treble and bass clef letter names which is a great challenge for my older students!

Halftime Show/ National Anthem/ Lift Every Voice/ America the Beautiful

Obviously there are a lot of ways directions you could go with this but the basic idea is to compare performances from various Super Bowls and have students vote on their favorites, explaining the reasons for their choices with musical elements of the performance. You could also focus on specific musical characteristics, whether it's dynamics, genre, tempo, timbres, or something else, and have students identify that element in each performance of the same song that they hear. 

Music Notation/ Vocabulary Review Game

This is another general idea that can be applied to pretty much anything you want to review. It could be rhythm note values, note letter names, instrument sounds/ names/ families, dynamics/ tempo vocabulary, or whatever else you're working on. All you need is an image of a football field (look it up online and either project it, print it out, or draw a basic on on the board) and some questions/ tasks for each team to complete. Split the class into 2 teams, assign each team to one side of the field, and tell them that they get 5 yards for each correct answer/ completed task. You'll need some way to mark their progress across the field, whether that's writing with dry erase, magnets, or some other object you can move across the "field".

You can make it a little more complicated by having "downs" like in football rules, where if they get a question wrong it goes to the 2nd/3rd/4th down before the other team gets a turn, or just keep it simple and have each team take turns to see if they get 5 yards or not.

Jingles

I haven't done this in a few years but writing a jingle is such a fun composition activity for older students, and one of the main attractions of the Super Bowl for a lot of people is the ads! They choose a product, write a few lines promoting it, and then add a catchy melody. You could tie it into a unit on instruments of the orchestra by having them write jingles about specific instruments, or tie it into a unit on genres by having them advertise a genre, or write their jingles in a specific genre.

Super Bowl Food Rhythm Composition

This is another easy one to use with any age: notate different super bowl foods as rhythms and have students use them to compose, or just practice reading (and maybe playing on instruments) the notated rhythms. Obviously there are tons of options and you can adjust how you say certain words to fit with the rhythms students are working on in different grade levels, but here are a few examples to get you started:

I hope this gives you some fun ideas you can use in your lessons to bring the Super Bowl into your music classroom! Of course there are plenty more ways to incorporate the football theme- I'd love to hear ideas you've tried in the comments!

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Who Has Seen the Wind?

There are some songs I use in my elementary music lessons that can be used for so many different music concepts that I end up using them in multiple lessons with multiple grade levels, and "Who Has Seen the Wind" is one of them! I can't say I use it in every grade every year- I think my older students' eyes would roll higher than the sky if I did that to them- but I have used it in different grades over the years so many different ways and it has honestly been equally effective every time, so today I'm compiling all of the ways I've used this song in one place.

If you aren't familiar with the song, it is based on a poem by Christina Rossetti. I'm not sure who wrote the melody but I found the hauntingly simple song originally from The Yellow Brick Road- listen to her recording here and see some of her other great lesson ideas and resources for the song in her blog post here.

Early Childhood

I have used the song most often with Kindergarten. I add some simple hand motions to the first verse and teach them the song, then have them play along with the steady beat on egg shakers, then use it as a way to introduce xylophone playing by having them play on the steady beat on D and A. To make it even more magical I have some students play other instruments with windy sounding timbres, like ocean drums, wind chimes, rain sticks, ratchets, and finger cymbals, and have students rotate through the parts. 

One new addition to that lesson plan this year was the song, "Blowing In the Wind" by Stephanie Leavell from Music for Kiddos. It goes perfectly with the song and is a great movement activity after having young students sitting still and concentrating on playing instruments and singing at the same time! 

2nd Grade

I introduce half notes in 2nd grade and this song is an easy one to teach quickly and have students aurally identify the half notes in the melody at the end of each phrase. I also have students practice performing half notes on instruments by showing them how to play sustained notes on metallophones and having them play a half note bordun on D and A with the song.

3rd Grade

The melody of this song uses low E, G, A, and B, with the notes going up and down the scale, so it's perfect for recorders when students are working on those notes! I always start with G, then low E, and add A and B, and this one has been a great option for when we first put those 4 notes together because the melody doesn't skip around. You can read details about how and why I start on G/E in this blog post.

Upper Elementary

Believe it or not I just used this song with 5th grade last week! I like to pull out some of these short and simple songs that I typically use more with younger students as a quick way to review or introduce a specific musical element or concept in a succinct, clear way. In this case I use it as an example of minor tonality- I have students identify the tonality after singing it, then I use it to discuss how tonality can impact the message or mood of the music, and we talk about why the composer might have chosen minor to go with the poem's words. Then I use it as a way to get students thinking about other expressive elements that help communicate the mood or message of the song by experimenting with different dynamics, tempi, and articulations and picking the ones they think best fit the song.

If you haven't used this song in your elementary music lessons yet, I hope you'll try it out! It's such a simple song but works so well in every grade I've used it. Have more ideas for using this song as a teaching tool? I'd love to hear more lesson ideas in the comments below!

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Contemporary Palestinian Musicians

I'm always on the lookout for contemporary musicians from different cultures to share with my students, and I recently found myself down an online rabbit hole discovering several contemporary Palestinian musicians that are not only cool enough for my oldest students but have music videos and songs that are completely appropriate for elementary school and (obviously) musically interesting, creative, and well-executed. If you're looking for some new music, artists, or music-related videos to share with your students in elementary music class (or, honestly, with middle school or high school students as well), I highly recommend checking these out!

Zeyne (go to 1:56 for the song): 

Dana Salah: 

Noel Kharman: 

Walaa Sbait: 

Anees Mokhiber: 

Almultahiat: 

There are so many more wonderful contemporary artists, and of course many more older ones, but for this post I wanted to stick with songs with themes that aren't too heavy and artists who are current so they are sure to spark elementary students' interest without necessarily triggering a conversation you may not be equipped to handle appropriately in the context of the classroom. But I'm sure there are many more songs and musicians we can add to the list! If you have more names or titles you think should be on the list please leave a comment. 

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Music Teacher Planner

I love looking back through my planner over winter break before I take out the old weekly pages and add in the new ones starting in January, and as a music teacher who has found the perfect paper planner that works for me and uses it daily, I thought other teachers might like to see what it looks like when you truly use it for everything, every day! So here is my actual planner and what my monthly and weekly pages looked like so far this school year.

If you want to use the same printables I use for my planner, you can get them here (and keep in mind there are 6 other weekly planning templates to choose from depending on your class schedule)!

If you have any questions about anything you see, or about how I use my planner, please leave a comment or send me an email. I love talking planners any day! 

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