The techniques you use to present each song are just as important as any other techniques, and can serve to spark or diminish energy, pacing, and engagement. Songs with young children are for the sake of experience rather than performance. Your role is to offer the song in all its splendor, allowing children (and parents) to experience it in their own way. You are not “teaching the song” so that children or parents can “learn the song.” Rather, you are creating with each song, an aural experience unique to that song, with techniques that make the song come alive, so that children can literally be moved by all the dimensions that brought you to choose the song—its energy, its beauty, its joy, its line, its driving rhythm, its text, its loveliness, its whimsy.

Play Songs are pure energy, one of your greatest resources for sculpting the energy of a class. They can move the class to joy, fury, hugs, calm, and delight, and do so at any point in the class. Play Songs serve best when they are immediate with children—you sing, they engage. The song says and does it all, without any verbalization. A good Play Song invites participation and parent/child interaction, just by its very nature. You simply start singing the song and the class is with you, whether or not anybody other than you is singing. The song and its energy will shape the energy of the class, while providing a delightful experience.

The spontaneous start of a Play Song serves the spontaneity, energy shift and playfulness of the class.  For example, one verse of Hello, Hello Little Children! as a “signature song” opening, commands attention amidst the chaos of a group of little children and parents, a clarion call to the start of the “seamless children’s play.” Who Can Walk Like a Duck? Invites delight, participation, and playfulness. Just the opening line of Everybody Follow Me moves the energy to high activity, while the opening line of I Have a Friend settles all.  Each Play Song offers a different way to play with children, to interact with children, and the placement of each Play Song in a lesson plan can provide an instant burst of energy, or burst of calm, while contrasting and balancing with other activities.

Play Songs are an invitation to play.  They don’t need explanation. A song that needs any more instruction than “circle please,” in a class of young children with parents, defeats its very purpose. You will find that trying to get a class of little children without parents into a circle, or to find partners, is anything but musical, and diminishes energy. Play Songs are best served without props or imposed games. The words to Play Songs are the driving force, and in themselves, serve like props or games. Start the Play Song spontaneously, and sing as many verses as needed for energy management. Play Songs can provide the needed release after more intense musical focus with Rhythm or Tonal Activities or Art Songs, for needed calm after any exciting activity, and for anchors, particularly opening and closing anchors.

Art Songs offer a different kind of energy, compelling the musical mind, directing children to musical energy. The richest experience with an Art Song includes a tonal and rhythm prep, many successive verses, and flowing movement. Unlike the spontaneous Play Song that charges children’s energy, the Art Song charges children’s musical energy—not through words, perky rhythms, or directed activity, but through sheer musicality, summoning children’s artistry. Priming the musical mind for an Art Song with a preceding Tonality Activity in the same tonality offers the aural backdrop upon which the Art Song can be grasped. Speaking on the resting tone to set up the meter makes a smooth musical transition into the Art Song. Repeated verses provide for the musical mind to explore melody and rhythm and how they work together with text, creating line, phrase, energy. To engage children in Art Songs, prep tonality and meter and just start singing with flowing movement. Your continued verses and flowing movement will invite children to engage in the way they most often engage—first by being spellbound, then with flowing movement, then with singing. Many children simply absorb the song—a very musical response. Movement, then, is their most immediate entry into the artistry of the song, and as children reach 3, 4, 5 years old, more will try to sing as well. Consider yourself successful in creating the experience of an Art Song if you have a class of spellbound children, even if they are not yet moving or singing with you.

Let the Art Song move the children. Explanations about words, instructions of how to move, props, or games only take away from the experience of the Art Song. Engage simply with the energy of the line in your movement, whether sitting or standing, perhaps articulating the rhythm of the words with your hands and arms amidst your flowing movement—turning or twisting the line as it moves.  The intensity of the experience of an Art Song can be broken with a Rhythm Activity or Play Song as the next activity.

Gem Songs, like Art Songs, are best experienced when the tonality and meter are set up, and when there are multiple verses, providing for the musical mind to explore melody and rhythm and how they work together with text, creating line, phrase, energy. A preceding Tonality Activity in the same tonality primes the pump, as does then chanting on the resting tone to set up the meter. Unlike Art Songs, the words to Gem Songs come into play, literally, as Gem Songs are more whimsical than Art Songs. The energy of the words drive the Gem Song, while the meaning of the words play into its musical sophistication. Gem Songs become the higher level of Play Songs, with the music itself becoming the play.

Under the Chair, for example, is a delightful play party in Dorian tonality and Unusual Paired meter. Like an Art Song, it is better absorbed when the tonality and meter are set up. Like a Play Song, however, this song demands the same kind of spontaneity of Who Can Walk Like a Duck? Set up the tonality and meter as the aural backdrop, and then you can start the song as spontaneously as any Play Song, and use it like a Play Song to break the more intense experience of a Tonal Activity or Art Song.

Let your movement reflect each Gem Song, whether flowing, macro/micro, or dictated by the song. Capture the energy of the line and the energy of the words in your movement, modeling with your body the playfulness, the musicality. Let your arms/hands move the articulation of the words, the twists of phrase, the musical subtleties. As with Art Songs, the experience of Gem Songs is diminished by props, explanations about words, instructions of how to move, or imposed games. Approach Gem Songs as a musician, without gimmicks, and the children with receive them as musicians.