Children’s energy abounds. It is the raw material that every child brings to class. Direct it wisely and you can create a very satisfying experience for everybody. Ignore its power and it can defeat whatever you try to do.

Children’s energy is like putty in your hands. You can shape it, stretch it, play with it, create with it, enjoy it, transport it, and engage with it. Children’s energy is your greatest ally, though it requires your awareness and developing skill to fully enchant, leverage, manipulate, maneuver, and engineer children’s energy.

Parents, out of necessity, generally learn to leverage children’s energy. They plan to stop at the grocery store with their little one after a feeding and before a nap, assuring that the child will be in a cooperative state at the grocery store. They bring a favorite toy in case they get stuck in a long line at the check-out. They pull out a snack in the car to keep the child going a little longer. Parents know how to distract a child with a favorite little squeaking toy when the child is attracted by something unsafe. Parents know how to gently relax a child who is over excited. Parents regularly charm children through the mundane chores of changing a diaper or putting on a snow suit.  

Similarly, we can charm children into happily engaging with an entire 45 minutes of music activities by cleverly leveraging children’s energy. We do this through careful lesson planning—the songs and activities we choose, the sequence we place them in, the level of activity in each, the props we use, the movement we engage with, the non-verbal execution, the transitions between activities. We can cleverly manipulate children’s energy from the moment the curtain opens for our “children’s play” until that curtain closes. Like the skilled parent, we plan our activities to engage children happily throughout the 45 minute journey, directing the child to this charming little “aural toy” when distraction is needed, settling the child with this activity after exciting with this one, bringing out this familiar activity or prop. As teachers creating lesson plans, we have to anticipate the unbounded energy of young children, and plan to manipulate it to serve musical needs. We can literally charm children into doing almost anything we’d like.