Lesson plans for music learning immerse children in various meters and tonalities, provide for interactivity with the various meters and tonalities, offer Art Songs and Gem Songs in those meters and tonalities, and intersperse the occasional Play Song for other purposes. Favorite Art Songs and Gem Songs (your favorites or the children’s) can, of course, be brought back occasionally, but the requirements above can be best met with a broad variety of Art Songs and Gem Songs. It is the experience rather than the mastery of an Art Song or Gem Song that is the goal.
Parents read many books to young children—some from the home shelves, some from the library. Children will always have their favorites that they want to hear again and again, however their exposure to stories is not limited to their favorites. Children may be able to recite their favorite stories word for word, but the experience of a new story takes the child on a new adventure. Similarly, the experience of each Art Song and Gem Song takes children on a new musical adventure. Their exposure to Art Songs and Gem Songs is not to be limited by their favorites (or by your favorites). Each new Art Song and Gem Song with the children will take you on a musical adventure as well—an adventure into children’s artistry. Broaden your own experience as well as the children’s by selecting songs for the children that you have not used.
It is hard to go wrong with children of any age with an Art Song from the Songbook, Cherry Blossoms. You may decide to save the more musically complex for more developed children, but like a fine children’s poem, a fine Art Song for children immersed in meters and tonalities reaches the artistry in all ages, whether the poem or song is fully comprehended or not. The length of a song, musical complexity, or song lyrics might lead you to choose some of the Gem Songs of Dance, Merry Voices! and Oh You Can Sing! over others for particular ages or groups of children. Don’t, however, discount any of these for the experience they can provide for the children through active exposure.
Revisiting a song is always a joy for children, and some songs will always be welcomed with great enthusiasm. Children need not have to learn the words to the song or be able to sing the song to find great delight in engaging again with a song in a subsequent lesson. Re-experiencing a song through movement, like hearing a book read again, allows children to repeat the adventure, while offering opportunity for greater understanding and greater familiarity, especially when presented in the context of an established tonality. You might even find children identifying tonality by volunteering for example, that “Fish In the River is like Wake Up, Jacob”—both being in Mixolydian tonality.
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