Tag Archives: children's music

Music and the Growth Based Mindset

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I’m creating a series for people who teach babies, toddlers and preschoolers and for children’s librarians about learning how to play ukulele to supplement their storytimes and group times with live music.

But I know that many of those professionals might think “but I’m not a musician! I can’t do that. I just don’t have that talent.” Sounds like fixed mindset, eh?

Let me tell you my story of how I got past that block, in hopes of inspiring you to do the same.

When I was young, I thought I was a bad singer. Because way back in fourth grade, my teacher told me I didn’t sing well enough to do a solo. So I spent years not singing solo in public (though I would join in to camp songs or hymns at church as long as plenty of other people were singing.) But, when I started teaching parent-child programs 30 years ago, I truly believed that babies benefit when parents sing to them, so I confronted the fact that part of my job was to teach the parents to sing to their babies. I had to get past my anxiety about my voice and sing out boldly – and I did it… for the sake of the babies!

But, despite that accomplishment, I still believed that I would never play an instrument well.

Because way back when I tried to learn an instrument (piano at age 5, recorder at 10, guitar at 13), I wasn’t good at it yet. I was used to getting good at things quickly, and playing an instrument just didn’t work that way. And I just didn’t have the patience or attention span to follow the recommended method of playing the same song again and again and again till I got good. In eighth grade, my teacher told me that I was incompetent at tuning a guitar. I let those judgments settle me into a fixed mindset that “some people have the talent to be a musician, and some don’t. I don’t have the talent.”

But, a couple years ago, I gave myself the ukulele challenge – I decided to apply the growth based mindset to learning an instrument. Anyone can get good at anything – they just have to work hard at it, and persist through challenges, and focus more on process and progress than on product.

It turns out that learning an instrument as an adult is much easier! I’m better at learning now than I was then, and better at motivating myself. And while as a 13 year old, I didn’t want to “play baby songs” as I learned, when I learned as an adult, who happens to teach preschool, it turns out that playing baby songs was exactly my goal! And I still don’t like practicing the same song again and again, but as a grown-up, I decided I don’t have to follow rules about how you should learn. I skip from song to song to song whenever I want to, and my skills just build across the board over time.

I started by learning just a few chords, and then finding children’s songs I could play using those chords. Once I felt confident enough to try it, I would play one song on my ukulele at each week’s class. Over time, I added in a few more here and there.

Now, I have a large collection of songs I can play. I haven’t tried to memorize them all – I have always had notes in front of me anyways when I teach circle time to help keep me focused, so it was easy to just incorporate the chords into my notes and play along. Live music is now a part of every group time I lead.

And ukulele has become so much more for me than something I do for work. Each morning after I put my son on the bus to school, I spend 30 minutes playing ukulele – building my skills, expanding my repertoire. Rather than feeling like a chore, it feels like self care – “me time.” Most Sundays, I go to a ukulele group that meets in the park where a group of about 20 of us find joy in playing songs together for a few hours. I have led camp singalongs, and led services at my church.

Rather than having a view of a specific “product”, I have approached this whole thing as a process, and focused on progress. It’s so exciting when I reach new levels: each time I master a new chord, when I learned what it meant to play in the key of C versus the key of G, when I learned about the circle of 5ths and how to transpose, when I learned different strums, and then finger picking, when I learned to play by ear. It is so exciting to me, and amazing to me that I have reached the point where I can pick up any chord chart and play the song; I can look at melody lines on sheet music or at ukulele tabalatures, and quickly pick out any simple melody. It’s just something I could not have imagined a couple of years ago. But I got there!

Just a little step at a time.

Will you join me on the journey?

Check out: Getting Started on the Ukulele

Adding an Instrument to Your Teaching

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Once upon a time, many preschool teachers played the autoharp when leading group time, strumming along as they sang Twinkle Twinkle or Ring Around the Rosie.

Or many played piano or guitar. Playing the music as you sing, rather than just singing a capella, helps to deepen the learning for the children and increase their musical knowledge.

Some teachers used records (or cassettes or CD’s) to provide the music for circle time. Many recordings were designed just for this purpose, and worked well – they were a good tempo, just enough repeats of the song to be fun but not drag on and on.

These days, when we all carry in our pocket a phone with instant connection to the Internet, it’s tempting to just always pull up a YouTube video for music.

But YouTube videos are generally not made for this use, they are so often over-produced, overly energetic, over-enthusiastic or cloyingly sweet. Many of them have long musical interludes when no one is singing. Or ads or “like and subscribe” announcements. They can’t adapt to the mood of the moment, or respond to what’s happening in the room that day. And playing pre-recorded music doesn’t show children how music is made, or instill in them the idea that someday they could make music too.

Bringing live music into the classroom is so much more engaging.

And I know some of you may be thinking – “but I’m not a musician! I can’t do that.” I used to think that too. Make sure to check out my next post on Music and the Growth Based Mindset.

Did you know that if you have a ukulele (or a guitar), you can learn how to play a C chord and an F chord in just a few minutes of watching YouTube videos?

And did you know that if you can just play a C chord and an F chord, that means that you can play Wheels on the Bus – and at least 4 other songs set to that same tune! (In my handout below, just for C and F, I have chords for Kookaburra, 2 songs set to Itsy Bitsy, 4 to Oh My Darling Clementine, 5 for Mary Had a Little Lamb, and 10 songs set to the Farmer in the Dell tune!)

I will be writing a series of posts on how quickly and easily you can go from knowing nothing about how to play an instrument to playing ukulele confidently.

If you already know how to play an instrument – like guitar or piano – or if you have an old autoharp sitting in the closet at your classroom, and just need the chords to be ready to play, check out this handout.

chords for ECE teachersDownload

You can also check out Storytime Ukulele, where they list chords for lots of standard kids’ songs.

If you don’t yet know how to play an instrument, check out the rest of my ukulele series:

Books that Sing – Examples

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I learned the idea of “books that sing” from Nancy Stewart. These are books that can be sung instead of read. I built a year-long preschool music curriculum (download it from that link!) that included 4 of these books each month. And here is the list of books that I use. For each month’s theme, I include shaker songs, finger rhymes and songs, as well as the books.

Here is a detailed preview of the books we use in April.

I looked for books featuring a springtime theme. I considered Inch by Inch, the Garden Song, which is quite good. (I use it in my kids’ science class when we talk about plants.) I thought long and hard about Dancing Feet by Lindsey Craig and Mark Brown (video) which would be so easy to make up a jazzy tune to sing it to. Or, since we’re in Seattle, there’s Singing in the Rain, the lyrics from the movie with illustrations by Hopgood. (video) But, I’ve been trying to choose books where the children know the tune so they can sing or hum along.

I decided to check for books of “Over in the Meadow” and “Five Little Ducks.” Turns out that there are at least five versions of each song! Let’s check them out:

Over in the Meadow

This is a classic counting song. If you’re not familiar with the tune, you can hear it in this video, which is from the Barefoot Books version of this book that sings. We didn’t have a copy of that one at my library but you can find it on Amazon*.

Over in the Meadow – Jane Cabrera. Each two-page spread has a verse and all the animals for that verse to count. In this book, at the end, it says “over in the meadow while the mothers are away, can you count the babies? they’ve all come to play.” You can then play an I-spy style to find and count all the animals in one scene. My library has the Wonderbook version where you can play the music to sing along to. But, the recording is a little bland and slow to my taste – I’d rather sing it myself.

Over in the Meadow illus by Rojankovsky. Copyright 1957, featuring lovely pastel sketches. At the end of the book, there is a nocturnal scene where many of the animals appear. It includes an owl chasing a frightened looking bunny which might trouble a few particularly sensitive children. Includes sheet music of the tune on the last page.

Over in the Meadow illustrated by Anna Vojtech. The illustrations are lovely. I like that in addition to the main illustration where you can count the animals “hiding” in the scene, and then below the verse, there’s a picture of just the baby animals. I’m dubious about verse 10 with the little beavers ten. “Beave said the mother, we beave said the ten…”

Over in the Meadow, illus by Paul Galdone. (c. 1986. not available on Amazon.) Although I don’t love the illustrations, an interesting aspect is that it has one page that shows the digit and the written out number, then a second page to finish the verse.

Over in the Meadow, illus by Ezra Jack Keats. Nice naturalistic illustrations. Only minor quibble is that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the parent and the babies, which makes it harder for the kids to count the babies accurately.

Also check out Over in the Ocean by Berkes – I LOVE this book. (Here’s a video. Not to be confused with Jack Hartman’s Over in the Ocean.) Berkes also has Over in a River, in the Forest, in the Arctic, in the Grasslands, in the Jungle, in Australia and Going Around the Sun: Some Planetary Fun which are all to this same tune. You can also find Over in the Garden by Ward, Over in the Garden by Matthies, Over in the Clover by Ormerod, Over in the Mangroves (set in India/Bangladesh), and Over in the Woodland about mythical creatures.

Five Little Ducks

Another counting rhyme. This one counts down from five to zero. And then rather than leaving poor mama duck bereft, all five little ducks come back at the end. Here’s the tune. Or another version. There is also a Raffi recording of it.

Five Little Ducks illus by Penny Ives. Nice illustrations, cut outs in the pages that preview things on the next page.

Five Little Ducks, by Denise Fleming. In this version, instead of Mama Duck calling the babies back, Papa Duck does. It also adds in days of the week and instead of just going over the hills and far away, they go other places. Monday – through the woods, Wednesday past the paddock, Thursday – across the fields, Friday – down the road. Saturday they come back. Then, Mama Duck discourages them from leaving the nest, because on Sunday “we all rest.” At the end of the book, there’s a paragraph of information on each of the animal types depicted.

Five Little Ducks illus by Pamela Paparone. Shows Mother duck doing all sorts of work around the farm: gardening, hanging laundry, ironing, picking apples, but also painting a picture. A nice feature is the pages that show the correct number of little ducks either walking away up the hill or coming back down the hill, plus they’re seen in another scene, so there’s lots of opportunities to count the same number to get a good grasp that three is three, no matter how they’re arranged on the page.

Five Little Ducks illus by Aruego and Dewey. Part of the Raffi Songs to Read series. My least favorite illustrations. But the end is unique. After all the ducks are gone, and none of the little ducks come back, we see Mama in Autumn, Mama in winter, and going out in spring to find all five little ducks who have all had babies of their own! One has five babies, one has four, one has three, one has two, and one has just one baby. Also has the sheet music at the end.

Five Little Ducks illus by Ivan Bates. A pretty straightforward edition with nice drawings and the sheet music in the back.

And that’s not all! There are more versions available – see them on Amazon.

How I Use Books that Sing

Sometimes I introduce the song first, teaching it and helping the kids get the hang of it first before introducing the book. This is helpful if either I think the song is brand new to everyone OR if the words in the books have a lot of variations from the typical words. (For example, I would want them familiar with the Over in the Meadow tune before introducing Over in the Ocean. When I read Over in the Ocean, since the words are so different than they know, I would have them hum the tune along with me as I sing the words in the book. It turns out three year olds are great at humming tunes!)

With these books, since most of them align really closely with the traditional words and since I have SO MANY books to choose from this month, I’m just going to teach the songs by reading the books, saving the ones with the most word variations (like the Papa Duck version) for last.

*Note: I am an Amazon associate. If you click on any book name below, it will take you to Amazon where you can read a full description of the book. If you end up buying anything after clicking through, I get a small referral bonus at no cost to you.