songs for children

[xana81]

Hi!
My children love English songs, especially those involving some kind of actions or movements, like "Head & Shoulders", "One Finger, one thumb"... Can you tell me any songs you've used in cass and that have worked well?
Thanks.

[Sally Olsen]

Old Macdonald
If You're Happy and You Know It
Two Little *beep* Birds
Sally Go Round the Sun (my favourite of course)
Ring Around the Rosy
My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
Where is Thumkin?
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
BINGO
ABC song
1, 2 Buckle My Shoe
Hokey Pokey
Three Blind Mice
Teddy Bears Picnic


and all the holiday songs

[xana81]

Thank you Sally, I've already known the most popular ones, but there are others I'd never heard about them! so thanks. If you have more ideas, please keep writing!

[Sally Olsen]

I found that 8 and 9 year olds love the MTV songs as much as the older ones. It is hard to get ones that aren't full of suggestive lyrics and actions but I think there are some. Lyrics.com has all the words of all the songs. I used to show the kids Japanese videos because they have great dance routines and then they would try to make something up for an English song they chose in groups of four or five. Each group would learn their song by heart - you can give them cassettes so they can practice. Then after two or three practice sessions during classes, they gave a performance, asked for suggestions and then finally gave a performance for others. We went to a senior's home. Some groups even made costumes or wore the same things so they looked more like a group. One group bought white T-shirts and drew on them. We gave the lyrics of all the song in book form to everyone in the class or at the senior's home so they could follow along and by the end, they knew most of the songs by heart. It was funny to walk into the local afterschool hangout and hear the kids singing along in English when I knew some of them didn't know enough to carry on a conversation. I try to make picture stories of the songs in some way. I pose the kids in various situations to demonstrate the story or get pictures from the Internet - Google, Images. They can do this as well if you have access to the computer lab or it can be homework for the kids that do have computers. You can post the pictures with a line or two of the song underneath in the bulletin boards. When things get hairy in the classroom you can start to sing or if you have 5 minutes at the end of the class. You probably will find someone with real talent and can encourage them to learn a song to sing the class. We had an city-wide English competition between schools and the students had to open with a song by their team and were graded on presentation, pronunciation, costumes and so on. The final graduation was so great when we were travelling around the city in the bus and they sang all the English songs that we had learned and that they had learned since grade 1. Sure made my day!

[CharlieG]

I strongly suggest you visit www.funsongs.co.uk. This site has lots of very catchy action songs and related lesson materials.

[silvana]

children like songs that have rythm and involve lots of movement.
you can create the songs yourself and have them clap and jump. Once i just had a puppet and there was no tape recorder so i sang it.
song like -hockey pockey- are really fun and help you teach the parts of the body. so if u need any help... write...
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