Using Music to Teach Preschoolers

Written by Thomas Sanders and Mary Ann Bradberry

'Specially Special Songs – Unison Songbook

Even if you can't carry a tune in a bucket, you can still help your preschoolers learn through music in Sunday School if you follow these guidelines:

• Play a recording of quiet instrumental music to set the atmosphere in your room.
• Learn songs for teaching preschoolers. Quarterly tapes are available for some of the curriculum you may use with preschoolers. Play the cassette tape or CD when you are in your car or at home. The repetition will firmly implant the songs in your mind!
• Invite a musical guest to come to your room to play an instrument and sing.
• Record your children singing songs and place the tape in your room for them to use.
• Create a quiet area of the room for music and listening. Although you use music throughout your teaching, you may want to set up a music/listening center from time to time. Provide a cassette tape player or CD player, a choice of cassette tapes or CDs of appropriate music, earphones, a few musical instruments and several blank tapes for children to create recordings. Add streamers for movement.
• Sing. Sing often. Sing even if you sing off-key. Preschoolers do not care how you sing; they only want to hear you sing.
  Include the children's names in a song whenever possible. Be sure to use every child's name once you begin singing names in a song.
• Create a calmer environment with instruments by providing instruments of the same type at the same time (different types of shakers or rhythm sticks).
• Accept each child's individual response to music. Encourage each child's creativity.
• Sing songs that use words and concepts preschoolers can understand. Avoid songs with symbolism. Literal-minded preschoolers will misunderstand meanings of symbolic or abstract songs.
• Don't pressure preschoolers to rehearse, perform in programs or wear choir robes. For the preschooler, these activities create tension and distract from the enjoyment of music and its use in teaching biblical concepts.
• Use new words to familiar tunes. Create a song to fit what you need.

This article is adapted from Teaching Preschoolers: First Steps Toward Faith.