In this blog post, I am sharing all about musical transitions for early childhood. Specifically, I'm going to talk about my favorite musical transitions that work in my preschool and kindergarten music classes, but some of these things can absolutely work with older ages.
Musical transitions are my jam! I always like to use music when I have the option. Instead of using some kind of verbal cue, I use music. I use a vocal or musical cue instead of verbal instructions because kids are getting verbal instructions all day long: “Sit down"!”, “Stand up!”, “Time to go”, “Put your shoes on”, etc… So, anytime I can communicate to a child through music, that's gonna be a huge benefit to me. The way that I think about it is that these musical cues can be stacked; you can have it in your lyrics, you can have it in your melody, you can have it in your rhythm, you can have it in your cadences, in your harmony. There are just so many ways to communicate with music!
Some kids are gonna pick up on the lyrics. Some kids are gonna pick up on the rhythmic cue. Some kids are gonna pick up on the melody. By stacking those cues and stacking that musical communication, you're increasing the chance that all the kids in your class are gonna be able to understand what you're trying to do. We're helping kids to be successful.
Using musical transitions is also an incredible class management tool.
So, here are 5 very simple and tried and true musical transitions that I use with kids:
1. Time To Clean Up
Let's go ahead and start with the one that a lot of people use at home and in classrooms; your classic cleanup song.
There are a couple of things that I think are particularly helpful in this song:
One is that the kids get this musical warning that's very gentle.
The introduction with the baseline is a really good way to kind of giving kids a warning that cleaning up is coming.
The goal for this is not that you say “everybody, we're gonna clean up, let's put on our cleanup song!” The goal is that you use the song in a consistent way every time so that all you do is you press play and the kids know exactly what to do. They know that cleanup is coming.
Also, they’ll know about how long they have to clean up. This song is just a couple of minutes long and they know they have a couple of minutes to do the cleanup process. You can even, depending on how quick the cleanup process is, work with them if you use this consistently enough so that they know that by the time the song ends, they should be in a different seat.
3. The other benefit of this song is that there are some built in sing along parts. I like to encourage kids to sing along while they're cleaning up.
4. It also got this cheerful, relaxed vibe to it but there's definitely some tempo to it, so that they're working towards something. All of those musical components are by design and have a purpose.
2. A song for waiting
The next song on my list is a waiting song, and this one actually originated from my sister-in-law, who is also a music therapist. She was on the podcast maybe six months ago and her name's Kerry Leavell. She's an incredible music therapist. She improvised this song, and we've adapted it over the years.
She did it with my daughter when my daughter was little because, you know, waiting is not exactly a kid's favorite thing to do, right? And it's not exactly an adult's favorite thing to have to be able to like say to kids, “You gotta wait, you gotta wait, you gotta wait!”
The whole idea of the song is to change the tone and the feeling of the concept of waiting. Waiting is often so frustrating for kids and for adults, and sometimes parents get overwhelmed, teachers get overwhelmed when they just have to repeatedly tell kids to wait.
This song will invite kids into the waiting with you. What my sister-in-law used to do, is that she would get up right in front of my daughter (she was about one at the time), she would put her hands out and she would do the sign for “wait”, which kind of looks like putting your hands out in front of you and wiggling your fingers. I have used this song in classrooms too, as a tool for myself, more than anything.
Here are the lyrics:
You gotta wait, wait, wait.
You gotta wait, wait.
You gotta wait because it's not time to go (we're not ready yet, cuz it's not time to eat, etc.).
This chant was shared on episode 78 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast. Listen to the entire episode where I share 5 musical transitions for early childhood or go to minute 9:51 of the episode.
3. Walk, Walk, Walk
Over the years I've shared this song with quite a few people, and it's one of those songs where I just have to be like “just trust me on this one, just try it.” There's something about it that kids become really, really interested in it, and it is a super effective tool.
Walk, Walk, Walk is a transitional movement song which means that I usually use it in between an active movement song (one where we're jumping and we're dancing, etc.) and one in which we are sitting down (calm-down movement song) where we need to focus, because I've never found that transition between a movement song where we are dancing and jumping to sitting down successful until I started creating these transitional movement songs. I talk more about these terms that I use for movement songs in my mini-course Movement Songs for Kiddos that includes 12 movements songs and how I use them, and Walk, Walk Walk is part of it. .
This is one of those that just gets kids really paying attention because it is simple, but it has a lot of musical structure, it has some requests for movements, and it gets their attention drawn in really well. And then, near the end of the song, the kids end up sitting down and ready to go onto the next thing.
4. “Throw A Note”
This transitional tool is not a song; it's a concept and it works well after Walk, Walk, Walk. I learned this from my internship supervisor, Lorrie Kubicek at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Sometimes, when she needed to get the attention of kids and she needed them to transition to something else, she literally just “threw a note up in the air” (sustained a tone for a period of time to catch kids’ attention). This sustained note it's a part of a cadence, which is very communicative and has this playful aspect that in and of itself, is an incredible transitional tool. So try it out!
This transitional tool was shared on episode 78 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast. Listen to the entire episode where I share 5 musical transitions for early childhood or go to minute 17:40 of the episode.
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5. Brush Your Teeth
This song is one that a lot of families use at home, and it's so funny because I've used and I've shared this song for so many years and it is yet another one that was inspired by my sister-in-law (a song that she also improvised!). She used to live across the street from us when my daughter was an infant and one day, she just started singing this ditty for brushing your teeth that I later expanded and turned it into a longer song called “Brush Your Teeth.”
This is a really great transitional tool for using at home but also a great one to practice if you work at a clinic or school setting, pretend you're brushing your teeth and then you can send it home with families as a tool for toothbrushing. The nice thing about any kind of transitional song is that it provides the structure for a length of time. This song is about two minutes ;it's about as long as the goal for kids brushing their teeth time-wise. So, if you're a parent, you can literally just press play and they will know what to do and when brushing their teeth will end because they know the song and they know that they will go all the way through the whole song.
If you have parents in your life that have young kids, if you have teachers in your life, anybody in your life who who works with toddlers, this would be an excellent episode to forward to them.
I just have to tell you, nothing makes me happier than people sharing my songs with kids. Truly. I appreciate it so much. My goal is that maybe a child's life is made just a little bit more fun, a little bit more joyful, and maybe even a little less stressful with music. It just means a lot to me that kids get to hear my songs. So, thank you so much for sharing my music with kids.
