How to Teach English to Young Kids Through Songs/Music

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By yourmamasaidwha
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Toddlers singing with their parents and friends...

A wonderful tool that early childhood educators can use when teaching English to children is by reinforcement of skills picked up by the use of songs and music.
The best way to use songs with children is to remember to promote singing and music and be as repetitive as possible.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

children, preschool or kindergarten age
the ability to remember children songs so that you can pass them onto children
annunciation
research on children's songs/music

Step 1

Practice singing songs with them often. Use these songs repeatedly so that children are able to understand and remember the lyrics.
Step 2

When teaching new songs to children that don't know them yet, present them to the children first, either yourself or by some means of listening to the audio, be it an mp3 or mp4 player, computer, an iPod, stereo with discs and cassettes, etc.
Step 3

Now that the children know their new song(s), you should allow them and encourage them to sing these same songs with you. You could do this with a group of children sitting in a circle on their towels, or you could pick a song for things that you do like cleaning, and always sing that song when you clean. Sing a song with your children when they're getting ready for the day or for school (getting dressed, washing hands, packing school bags that were supposed to be packed the night before, etc.)
Step 4

Songs that you should continually use would be songs that include numbers. These seem to stick like glue after the first couple or few times, and they're so much fun! Some examples of songs that include numbers would be: "Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" which is great for reinforcing the ability to count backwards, "The Ants Go Marching," "Five Little Ducks," and "This Old Man." These songs can be counting the numbers up, or counting the numbers down.
Step 5

album cover of They Might Be Giants

You can teach children the days of the week easily by using the tune of "The Addams Family." It goes "days of the week, days of the week, days of the week, days of the week, days of the week. There's Sunday, and there's Monday...there's Tuesday and there's Wednesday, Thursday and then there's Friday and then there's Saturday. Days of the week."
Step 6

Research fun and repetitive songs like "Mary Wore Her Red Dress," or "Down By the Bay." Just about anything you can remember from kindergarten will be wonderful if it's in a repetitive format, as this will help your children to learn while having fun.

Comments

apalmer said

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on 5/28/2009 My youngest daughter had a speech problem and music taught her to sing, rhyme, and talk in sentences. She has amazed everyone and music did the trick! Great article and thanks for sharing!