Musical Mondays is a high energy program of singing and music for children aged 18 months to 3 years--although we do allow children who are very enthusiastic about music of all ages to attend. The program lasts about one half hour.
The program I put together is organized like this:
we have an "opening song" we use the library song
We start out with songs that require motions but do not require standing such as:
the wheels on the bus
row row row your boat
my dog rags
do your ears hang low
(we sing these without music)
Then we hand out our instruments--maracas, egg shakers and tambourines
and we sing songs that do not have motions or actions and play along with the songs
such as
you are my sunshine
baa baa black sheep
mary had a little lamb
alphabet song
twinkle twinkle
We then do some basic music skills--fast, slow, loud, soft, crescendo, decrescendo and simple rhythms like 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1 &, 2 &, 3 &, 4 &, 1, 2 rest 4
We then sing the "clean up song" and allow the children to gain independence by bringing the instruments back to us and putting them in the container.
While everyone is standing--we put on a cd with a dance song--such as rockin' robin, twist and shout, land of 1000 dances and everyone dances--the librarian leads dancing moves like--the swim, the twist, the monkey, etc. and allows times of free styling as well.
After the dance song everyone is standing so we do songs which require standing such as
I'm a little tea pot
If you're happy and you know it
head shoulders knees and toes
then we always finish with skinnamarink a dinky dink
It flows nicely from one thing to the other. I generally do at least 4 songs in each category and one dance song. we do not use a cd to sing with--we just sing out and have fun.
If you do want to sing along with a cd--or mp3--have the songs ready to go in order or the time needed to change cds kills the energy.
by Connie Jellison, Brentwood Library
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