Music For Kiddos Podcast

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At this point in the Fall season, you may be starting to feel some exhaustion. There is a lot of excitement and energy that teachers, music therapists, and other professionals put into their work with kids. You may feel like you are starting to run out of fresh ideas. So, I am sending you all the love and encouragement that you need. I hope that you are taking some time for you and your family, and leaving room for some joy and rest.

But if whatever you have to give at work does not feel like it is enough, I am here to tell you that it is. It is enough, and the fact that you are even reading this blog post about resources and ideas, and supporting kids is beautiful. So, breathe. Take a couple of deep breaths right now and know you are doing enough, and hear me saying “Thank you!” for doing that beautiful, heroic work that you do with kids.

My goal with this blog post is to save you some time. One of my life goals for everybody is, “How do I make your life easier?” In that, I am including myself. We all carry a lot and keep all of the plates spinning. It is hard to do. Somehow we keep all the plates spinning and simultaneously feel like we are not doing enough, and it just doesn’t even make any sense. Right? So, I want to save you a little bit of time and brain space, and give you some ready-to-use Fall resources today.

I'm going to give you three no-prep Fall ideas that I have mentioned previously on the blog and podcast, but I'm calling them “Three Home Runs.” This will be a little refresher on them because they really are home runs. Then, I'm going to give you two more that I recommend for the Fall, and emphasis on “No-Prep.” I don't know why I got on this phrase “home run,” but it's kind of true - tried and true fall resources.

Three Home Runs

This is a really simple little song. There is a big “SPLAT!” in it that the kids absolutely love, and it goes like this:

Five perfect pumpkins in a pumpkin patch
One went rolling and soon went SPLAT!
Oh, no! What do you think about that?
Only four perfect pumpkins in a pumpkin patch.

There's a pretty fun animated video of this song on our YouTube channel that is popular. You can use the video, sing it, or play the recording that is also on Spotify (or on all the streaming services). That is Home Run #1.

“Blowing in the Wind” is a scarf song. So, all you need are a few scarves! It’s another simple song and the theme goes like this:

Blowing in the wind, blowing in the wind
My scarf is blowing in the wind
Falling down, falling down
With a WHOOSH! and PLOP!

The song goes on and the scarf does different things in the wind like dancing, swirling, etc. Then, there is a spot in the song where you sneak the scarf and ball it up in your hand so you can hide it, and then throw it. The kids love this song! You can sing it, play a recording of it from any streaming service, or use the lyric video on our YouTube channel. Any way you choose, it is definitely a Home Run.

My last Home Run to give you is the book and the song “The Shy Little Monster.” About seven years ago now, I wrote this song, and it was the most popular song at Music For Kiddos for a few years. People begged and begged for it to become a children’s book, and so that is what we did.

Essentially, it is a song about a shy little monster dressed up like a lobster and needs some help finding his voice from his friends. There are very, very clever and cute characters from our illustrator, Sarah Echevarria.

The fun part of the song is the phrase:

Zibbity zabbity
Flibbity flabbity
Bippity Boppity BOO

First it is whispered, then said in a medium voice, then in a loud voice. It is one of those things that is incredibly effective in a classroom or session. The kids love it and are motivated and excited by it.

The song itself is available for streaming and on YouTube with and without lyrics if you would like to just use the song.

If you would like the visuals, I absolutely recommend the book. We also have an interactive flip book if you use a lot of technology in your room.

We also have this incredible teacher’s guide resource with 45 pages of “Shy Little Monster” ideas and easy, ready to use things. We also have a bundle that includes the teacher’s guide, interactive flip book, and the ebook. It is really, really fun and makes your life easier.

More “No-Prep” Ideas

The first of the extra No-Prep resources I have for you is the song “Falling Leaf.” This is a low-to-medium energy, movement and scarf song. It is really, really effective at giving kids an opportunity to move without bringing up the energy level too much.

Spin spin spin spin spin
Spin spin spin spin spin
I’m a whirly, twirly leaf and I spin spin spin spin spin
’Til the wind comes back again!

The wind calms down, so I take a little rest
The wind calms down, so I catch my breath
The wind calms down, so I take a little rest
Until the wind, until the wind, until the wind comes back again

That gives you a little taste of the song. It is very straightforward from an implementation perspective - the kids have scarves, and the song gives them instructions and directions for what they might do next. This is also a great song to have for a sublist or something like that. There is something about this very medium to calm energy level that's just really, really chill and really nice. Sometimes that is exactly what you need. This is also a good transitional movement song. We have this one on our YouTube channel as well as on streaming services.

The fifth resource that I'm gonna share about is a song that I feel is underutilized. So I really wanted to highlight this song. I think it actually works really well for Fall and even for Halloween. A lot of schools don't do a lot of Halloween, but this song would still absolutely fit, because it's just a little bit about pretending.

There are a couple different ways to do it. There is a section in the song where kids pose in rhythm - they love it! They get to be really silly or really serious with their poses.

Something else that you can do for a more Fall or Halloween-themed kind of thing would be posing in pretend costumes. For example, “How would you pose if you were in a bear costume?” “How would you pose if you were a ballerina?” And so on. You could even have visuals where the kids get to pick from two different options. There are a lot of different variations for this one. Here is how it goes:

Gotta keep dancing, gotta keep dancing

Gotta keep dancing, gotta keep dancing, all day long

Gotta keep dancing, gotta keep dancing

Until I pose, pose, pose (do silly freeze poses on the beat)

Every day I’m moving my arms

Moving, moving, moving my arms, yeah

Every day I’m moving my arms

Until I pose, pose, pose

This is one that works with a pretty wide range of ages. I've used this with kids all the way up to second or third grade, and they absolutely crack up. So try it, and just see how creative kids can get!

All of the recording for these songs are publicly available. My goal is, again, no prep time, no having to learn anything new. You can just put them on or play them live if you want to. But I hope this gives you some fun Fall things to do.

Just to do a quick recap. The five songs that I'm suggesting for no-prep are “Five Perfect Pumpkins,” “Blowing In The Wind,” “Shy Little Monster,” “Falling Leaf,” and “Gotta Keep Dancing.”

And we have about a million more. If you haven't seen our fall songs collection on Spotify and all the streaming services, it's called “Fall Songs for Kids by Stephanie Leavell.” That is a treasure trove of various Fall ideas as well. Fall is actually the time of year where we have our most popular songs. So fall is actually our time of year where we have our most popular songs. I don't know why that is, but they all kind of hit at the same time.

LOOKING FOR these and MORE FALL SONGS?

Checkout our FALL SONGS FOR KIDS album on Spotify and all music streaming platforms!

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