As a music teacher, you know the Winter months (especially December) can be the most stressful time of the year! You want to have joy during the Winter months, but it’s so hard trying to meet the needs of your students while their energy levels go way up. Have you heard the phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them?” This is kind of the philosophy you should have in the colder months when kiddos are having more inside recess. No matter what your teaching situation is this school year, having fun while celebrating Winter in the music room is what it’s all about. Your kids can still learn the objectives and concepts you’re wanting to teach, but just in a new and fresh way. Listen to podcast episode 130 and read this blog post to find new ways to celebrate Winter in the music room.
Read books about Winter
Kids love to be read to. As we live more and more in a digital world, I don’t feel like kids are read to near enough. The first thing you can do with a book is to just read it to your students! Find any book about snow, Winter, Santa, Hanukkah, or anything else related to Winter and start a collection that you can pull from for years to come. Honestly, my favorite places to find books is by happenstance. Be on the lookout for teachers getting rid of books, the librarian cleaning out their stash, and search your local book store. You don’t even need to know what you’ll be doing with the books ahead of time, but you can figure it out as you go.
As a music teacher, there is so much more you can do with a book than just reading it. Students can listen for a certain word individually, with a partner, or in a small group (which is more difficult of course with restrictions in place) and act out the word when it comes in. Or, students can be given different action words they can create movement to. With your older students, they can compose ostinatos or rhythms and create their own movement with certain sections or pages of a book.
Have a sing-a-long or a listen along
A memory that will last with me a lifetime is bringing my students to sing Christmas carols at the local airport, bank, and Tulsa Public schools resource building. Not only was it an amazing experience for my students, but the listeners enjoyed it as well. You could tell that a certain carol brought back a memory or made them smile as they sang along with us. Caroling may not be able to happen this year, but kids can still experience a good old fashioned sing-a-long. You can make it fun by bringing in hot chocolate or having a fake fire on the smartboard.
If your students aren’t able to sing this year because of CDC guidelines, they can do a listen along. Basically, just push play and let your students enjoy listening to various songs from Winter. You can have them working on an activity while they listen or they can even hum along to the melody.
Do holiday freeze dance
Have you played the game freeze dance with your students? This is one of my favorite filler activities of all time! The game is pretty much played as it sounds. You play music and then when it pauses, your students have to freeze. With holiday freeze dance, students are still freezing, but now will freeze like the word you call out. You can call out any Winter word like candy cane, Santa, reindeer, or Christmas tree. You’ll have so much fun seeing the different ways your students freeze and their imaginations come to life.
Do a listening map like to sleigh Ride
A listening map is a great way for students to follow along to music without needing to read the notes on the staff. “Sleigh Ride” has a great listening map where students can see the direction the music is moving. You can give your students different body percussion to use for each part or section of the song and give them movements to do as well. Or, your students can pat to the steady beat while listening along and watching the listening map.
Learn about the different Winter holidays and celebrate them
There are 3 main Winter holidays to celebrate with your students. The goal is to always make your music room as inclusive as you can and to make all students feel seen, heard, and valued. Students should be consistently learning about other cultures and genres of music every day. In the Winter months, you can celebrate Winter, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa with songs, games, and activities. Ask the students in your class what holidays they celebrate and let them learn from each other.
Play the dreidel game for Hanukkah, learn “The Carol of the Brown King” for Kwanzaa, and sing “Jingle Bells” for Christmas. Of course, these are just a few ideas and there are so many more, but the main goal is to make sure all the Winter holidays are celebrated.
Play Christmas games
Playing games to celebrate Winter in the music room is so fun! Three of my favorite games are Christmas carol charades, Pictionary, and Winter Bingo. With charades, students will act out any Winter song they’ve done in your music room. The other students will then take turns guessing what they’re acting out. Your virtual learners will definitely be able to do this activity. When playing Pictionary, you’re basically doing the same thing, but instead of acting out a Winter song, students are drawing it. This blog post contains many other Winter game ideas too!
Pass a present to the beat
As a music teacher, you’re constantly playing steady beat activities or at least incorporating it into your daily teaching (whether your students realize it or not.) While doing steady beat activities, you probably use something like a beanbag or a small ball. In the Winter months, why not have your students pass a present to the beat? You can just take a small box, wrap it, and have the kiddos pass it around. To make this a bit more creative, place a small “gift” in the box, and whoever wins the steady beat passing game gets to take whatever is in the box.
Any Nutcracker activity
The Nutcracker is one of the best, if not the best, way to celebrate Winter in the music room. If you go to Google and type in “Nutcracker activity for the music room” you’ll truly be shown so many different ideas. One idea I share in this blog post is to do a movement activity to “Trepak.” But, there are honestly so many amazing ideas from watching the ballet, doing different movement activities, or even adding instruments to it. It’s hard to take students to live performances, so the Nutcracker ballet is the perfect opportunity to bring a live performance to them in video or audio format.
Have kids practice rhythms or even compose rhythms using Winter words
I love using words to help students practice saying rhythms or to compose. During the Winter months, students can use words like “sleigh-ride”, “snow-ball fight” “Christ-mas tree” and so on to do just that. If students aren’t allowed to share items, prepare rhythms ahead of time and put them in little bags so each student can have their own. Then, give various instructions based on what you’re wanting to do and what concept you’re working on.
With your younger students, they can simply practice the rhythms or you could tell them to take 4 words out of the bag and put them all together while keeping a steady beat. With your older students, they can see if they can come up with their own Winter word rhythms. If they can compose in groups, they can create various ostinatos on instruments, body percussion, and movement and put all of the different rhythms together with their group.
What do you like to do to celebrate Winter in the music room? Tell me about it in the comments below or share your thoughts on social media as you share this post. I’d love for you to share this post or any of the resources on my website with a friend or colleague who you know NEEDS to see it too.
P.S. Are you feeling frustrated or stuck as an elementary music teacher? Check out these free resources to help you teach elementary music with confidence!
Also…I wrote a book called “Make A Note: What You Really Need To Know About Teaching Elementary Music” to help music teachers move forward in your teaching career. You can get your copy here.
