Executing every early childhood music class like a “seamless children’s play” is extremely effective with children of all ages, all size groups, and with parents, teachers, or aides. It is highly efficient, making music the focus. It facilitates classroom management while taking the musical imagination of all participants on a delightful musical journey. It feeds momentum that carries the children from start to finish, encouraging all to cooperate. It is also highly musical.

You are creating a “seamless children’s play” with each class that you teach. Your lesson plan is the script. The characters are Rhythm, Tonal, and Song. The costumes/props are perhaps a drum, a recorder, and rhythm sticks. The shape of your “program” is like any fine children’s play, with a beginning, middle, and end; with all entrances, exits, and transitions planned; with no stops, no talking; no input from children and parents during the program, and with strict adherence to the script, which creates its own world in the imagination—the musical imagination, and which takes into account children’s energy, building and releasing that energy strategically throughout the program to sustain children’s attention throughout the length of the class.

Children board your train with the opening song, ride the full length of the journey with you, and disembark after the final song, having been on an exciting musical journey. They look forward to another such experience, lighting up with that opening song in each successive week, knowing they are embarking on another exciting musical journey.

The teacher who effectively creates a lesson plan with appropriate Rhythm Activities, Tonal Activities, and Songs, meeting children’s musical needs and manipulating children’s energy, and who runs the class seamlessly, communicating only non-verbally, as if a children’s play that cannot be interrupted by mundane talking, awkward pauses, or children or parents questions, is all but guaranteed a successful, delightful, and highly musical early childhood music class that is very smooth even with a large group of children, and greatly satisfying to children, parents, and teacher.