Children love music and movement. Use the ideas below to help children learn songs and actions quickly.
Song Teaching Tips
The goal is for the songs to be memorable, repetitive, relevant, contain movement, and fun
Help the child understand what he/she is singing about
Be sure that the child uses his or her pretty voice to sing - yelling is not singing
Make repetitive singing interesting by sing using different voices (high, low, big, small, etc) or talk in big and little voice, faster and slower, softer and louder, add instruments
Stop in the middle of songs to repeat a hard line or action, talk about the meaning, or for whatever reason necessary to help the child learn it
Take the songs very slowly at first and wait for the child to do the action before moving on
Stop on rhyming words and have the child individually fill in the word
Count the number of times a word is in a song
Sing throughout the day - just because the child is not singing out loud with you does not mean they are not singing in their head
Adding Movements to Songs
Make actions simple. The younger the child, the less the motions.
Take the nursery rhymes, finger plays, and songs very slowly at first and wait for the child to do the action before moving on
Sometimes it works best to introduce the motions while saying the words
