3 Excellent YouTube Channels for Primary Music

I end each one of my early years classes (three years through first grade) with a YouTube video. This 2-3 minute activity has become an important part of our regular routine. My students really look forward to this little reward for a job well done, and it settles everyone down before I hand them back over to their parents. Everybody wins!

We have a "class helper" each day, and it is this person that gets to choose the video for the class. Our favorite YouTube channels have many wonderful options which can be overwhelming for my youngest students. I prefer to narrow it down to three choices. This makes it easier for a young child to select a video and avoids the inevitable delay as a young child ponders the unending choices!

Our top three channels are:

1. Super Simple Songs - Kids Songs

These folks offer a wide variety of videos featuring old favorites as well as original songs. We prefer the animated short videos, but they do have other options with human actors and puppets. These animations are of higher quality than those from many other channels I've seen, and the songs are well presented. This is our current favorite from Super Simple Songs:

2. Plank Road Publishing Music Concept Videos (Music K-8)

Plank Road has some super-fun educational videos which reinforce a number of teaching and learning concepts for music education. The songs are catchy and my students are often heard singing the tunes to themselves when trying to complete music theory activities! Our favorite Music K-8 video is Forte Piano:

3. Mother Goose Club

Like Super Simple Songs, the Mother Goose Club has a combination of animated and live action videos. While all of the videos are of high quality, my students tend to go for the animated selections. This one is quite popular, and it's great for reinforcing melodic contour:

I'd love to hear about your favorite YouTube channels. Please share them in the comments!

I give away a complete song package each month, so don't forget to Follow Me on TpT for these and other FREEBIES.

Thanks for reading,
Lisa

5 Great Pop Songs for Kids to Sing and Play

It can be quite challenging to find popular music that is appropriate for use in an elementary classroom. I use pop music quite often in my music classes, and I'm always on the hunt for new, "clean" songs. We use the songs for all sorts of movement activities as well as for singing and playing in our ukulele program.

This is a list of some of the songs we use on a regular basis. They are not all new, but they're all safe for classroom use!

1. "Better When I'm Dancing" by Meghan Trainor (from The Peanuts Movie)

This is my new favorite! Great beat, great words, great for dancing...this song helps me get through those daily requests for the old kid-favorite game, "Freeze Dance".

We play this one on ukulele in a different key:

2. "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake (from The Trolls)

This one really gets us moving, AND we can play it on the ukulele while we're getting down. With the exception of the "under the lights" section, the entire song is just C-am-F-am. My youngest students play the entire thing on the C chord only and have an absolute blast doing so!

Here's my ukulele video for this one:

3. "Count On Me" by Bruno Mars

Pretty obvious choice with this one! Great message, great melody...fun for singing and playing. This isn't the official Bruno Mars video channel, so hopefully this link will continue to work:

Here's the ukulele play along video we use with our students:

4. "Lost Boy" by Ruth B

My students still love this one even though they've been playing and singing it for a couple of years. While the em chord can be challenging, this one is fairly easy to play because the em-G-C-G chord progression repeats for almost the entire song.

Here's my play along uke video for "Lost Boy":

5. "Best Day of My Life" by the American Authors

This song was a HUGE hit at our spring concert in 2017! The students absolutely loved playing and singing it.

And here's the ukulele play along video:

As always, I'd like to thank you for reading and watching. Don't forget to Follow Me on TpT for new FREEBIES each month!

FREE Primary Concert Song | May FREEBIE | "Yellow Zipper"

It's hard to believe the end of the year is nearly upon us! You're likely quite busy planning all of your final performances. If you're like me, you're always in need of fun, new action songs for your young students.

This month's FREEBIE will be a great addition to your spring concert this year! "Yellow Zipper" has a fun melody and easy-to-learn lyrics and actions.

The "Yellow Zipper Complete Song Package" includes:

• recording with vocals (mp3)
• accompaniment track (mp3)
• sheet music and lesson ideas (PDF)
• lyric helper image sheet (PDF)
• SMART Notebook file
• demonstration video to teach the actions (mp4)

Head on over to my store to view the preview video and hear a bit of the song!

Teaching and learning highlights for this package are:

• beat
• ascending and descending melodies
• ta, ta rest and ti-ti
• key signature
• accidentals
• sharp sign (#)

Kids will enjoy the two activities included with the SMART file. The first one provides them with an opportunity to notate a small portion of the song.

The second SMART activity is a fun listening exercise! Student will touch an image to hear a sound sample and determine if it's an ascending or descending melody. The image will be dragged to the correct box!

This package is free until the end of May 2018. Download it for yourself and share the link with your teacher friends! Don't forget to follow me on TeachersPayTeachers for new FREEBIES every month of the school year.