"Joy" Theme Elementary Choral Program

If there's one thing students and teachers could use more of right now, joy is definitely at the top of the list. I am so excited about my spring elementary choral program this year, and it has made our weekly chorus rehearsals even more of a highlight of the week because it brings (literal) joy to the day! If you're looking for a fun elementary choir program, or even just a song to add to yours, that includes simple part singing and a range of genres and opportunities for musicality, I highly recommend these pieces!

For context, I have one elementary chorus that meets once a week during the school day as a pullout class with 5th and 6th graders. I have around 65 students in the group in the group this year, and they are such a great group! Ever since finding one of the songs about joy last summer I've been hoping to do a joy-themed program, and I am so excited with the way it has turned out.

Here are the songs I chose:

Joy Revolution I love that the two singer-songwriters who created and performed this song are women of color, the range is perfect, and it's an easy song to do in 2-part parallel harmony and include some featured soloists.

Joy This song was the original inspiration for this program- the first time I saw the linked arrangement with The Choir Room, I got chills! It is the perfect way to give younger students the opportunity to sing a gospel-style song without specific religious references, and it has opportunities for parallel harmony and a 3-part layered ostinato section that is so cool. It is definitely my students' favorite too!

I've Got Joy I stumbled on this song while scouring the internet for one more joy-themed song to complete my program and was thrilled to stumble on this one by Otto Gross and co! This is another great one for teaching part-singing and it's the only one on this list with an actual written octavo.

The great thing about this theme is it was super easy to tie in the orchestra and band- everyone has an easy arrangement of "Ode to Joy" they can pull together! So this will be the first time we have every ensemble performing something related to the concert theme.

I used to say I'm not a concert theme person but after doing 4 themed concerts in the last few years I don't think I can say that anymore! I still think that the priority for me is finding good songs the students will love that incorporate the choral and vocal skills I want to teach them with a variety of genres, styles, tonalities, and languages is the highest priority for selecting elementary choir concert pieces, but when a theme naturally emerges in the process that is a cool bonus! You can see all of the themed elementary choral programs I've put together in this post if you're looking for more great songs:

And if you want to see all of my posts related to teaching elementary choir, from rehearsal techniques to my favorite songs, arranging pieces for elementary choir to my favorite warmups, you can see them all here.