Spring Lessons for Elementary Music

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Spring…for many of us, that means that the end of the school year is right around the corner! It also means that there’s a lot of testing happening and that the kids are getting antsy! Here are some of my favorite spring lessons for elementary music!

A background of flowers with the words, "Spring Lessons: Lesson Ideas for the Elementary Music Room."

Spring Lessons for Elementary Music around Holidays

Between St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Holi, Passover, and more, there are a lot of holidays you can incorporate into your classroom. Here are just a few ideas for some spring holiday lessons.

A note about holidays in your classroom: if you don’t already, I would encourage you to learn about holidays you may not know much about. Your students may not all celebrate the same holidays as you, and, even if they do, it’s always fun and interesting to learn about cultures and celebrations around the world. I have so many students who celebrate holidays that I know less about, and they get so excited to share their experiences and traditions!

Also, before we get started, please know that I did as much research for authentic sources of information as possible. However, I’m certainly not perfect nor do I claim to be an expert in any of these holidays. If you see errors in this information, please send me an email with a source at jamie@caffeinatedj.com.

St. Patrick's day quarter and eighth note rhythm activity from the Caffeinated J TPT store

St. Patrick’s Day

First, I like to show students videos of Riverdance and Celtic Woman. I get shivers watching and listening to these videos! The precision and clarity of the dancing or voices are just stunning.

I also practice quarter and eighth notes with my kindergarten and first-grade students. I use this St. Patrick’s Day-themed digital activity. It has four activities, which means I can use it for multiple classes! 

This resource includes:

  • Reading 4-beat rhythm patterns (10 slides)
  • Identifying pictures with one- and two-syllables as quarter or eighth notes (self-checking; 7 questions)
  • Notating 4- beat rhythm patterns using quarter and eighth notes (self-checking; 10 patterns)
  • Composing 4-beat rhythm patterns (10 composition slides)
  • The entire product comes in standard and stick notation, 61 pages each
  • An additional file to read the 4-beat rhythm patterns using iconic notation for students who are not ready for standard notation yet (10 pages)

Here are some fun YouTube videos to use:

Holi

Holi is a Hindu religious festival symbolizing the start of spring and the victory of good over evil. It takes place during the last full moon of the lunar month Phalguna (National Geographics Kids), which is usually in March.

To learn more about Holi, you can go to these sources:

After we learn about Holi, we’ll watch and learn about music and dance from South Asia. I like this video of interesting instruments from India and this video of an amazing sitar performance. I show videos from the channel, Dance with Miss Priya, for tutorials on dances from India.

Easter

Easter is a Christian holiday marking the resurrection of Jesus after being crucified. It is celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon after the spring equinox on March 21 (Almanac). Here is a quick kids’ version of the story of Easter.

John the Rabbit is a fun call-and-response song to use in your elementary music room. This song could be used to practice sixteenth notes (here’s a post about other activities to teach sixteenth notes). It could also be a great assessment (here’s another post about assessing singing!)

Little Bunny Foo Foo is another cute song for younger grades. This would be a good song to work on quarter and eighth notes. It’s also a cute song for free movement- have students act out the song while they sing!

Passover

Passover is a Jewish holiday observed in the spring. It celebrates the Exodus, which is the Israelites escape from slavery as told in the Bible. Passover is celebrated for seven or eight days, depending on where people are in the world. The timing of Passover is different each year, and begins on the fifteenth day of the month of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar.

Here are a couple of resources for authentic Passover songs:

Spring compositions

For spring-themed compositions, I have students pick a few words that are spring related. The key is that they have to be a certain number of syllables depending on what rhythms we’re working on in class. So for my first-grade students working on quarter and eighth notes, they might pick the words “flo-wer,” “bug,” and “rain.” They would write those words in any order they want and then draw the corresponding rhythms above each word. 

In upper elementary, I’ll have students create their rhythmic composition first. I give them guidelines, such as what rhythms they have to include or how many of each need to be in the composition. After they create the composition then they can add words of their choice underneath. Some of them will create lyrics to the song while others may want to choose a few words to use, similar to the younger grades.

These activities can be extended to be assessments, too. If you need data on students’ playing, they could play their composition on an instrument of their choice. If you need data on their reading.

You could create a simple matrix to use in your classroom (you can get those for free here), but if you want the spring-themed composition pages that you see in the picture, I’ve created print-and-go worksheets that are versatile enough for PreK-5th grade. You can see those here.

If you want to know more about how I use composition in elementary music, you can check out these blog posts to read more about composition in lower and upper elementary.

YouTube Videos

If you’re looking for some more spring videos to use in your classroom, here are some that I recommend:

What are some of your favorite spring lessons for your elementary music room? Connect with me on Instagram (@caffeinated.j) for more lesson ideas!