Some of the questions I am asked about most is “What music do you use in the classroom?” “Do you have a playlist?” “How do you play music in the classroom?” So today I wanted to share our morning arrival playlist and give you some tips on how we use music in the classroom!
How Do You Play Music In The Classroom
Simple! We use iTunes! I have several playlists created on iTunes that we use. We have speakers plugged into the computer so we can get LOUD! Nothing fancy for our music in the classroom. We keep it simple!
We have these playlists:
Good Morning (for morning arrival and afternoon dance parties)
School-our morning songs and our clean up song
Christmas
Halloween
Luau
Ocean-ocean sounds for our ocean theme
Rock-A-Bye-Baby-(hit songs turned into lullabies for when we want calm/relaxing music…these songs are available on iTunes)
Irish-St. Patrick’s Day music
Morning Arrival
As my kids enter the classroom in the morning I want them be excited! I want to energize them and get them ready for the day ahead. We also know a lot of our kids come in sleepy. See, I used to be the teacher who played lullabies and classical music in the morning. But this type of music is designed to do 1 thing: put us to sleep! The last thing I want is to put my kids to sleep! So now we rock out in the morning! As the class arrives I have our morning arrival playlist set to shuffle! The volume is up so it’s loud. The kids eat breakfast, do their journals and read books. And the whole time we have music in the classroom!
Do they sing along? YES!!!!!! And I want them to!
Do they dance? YES!!!!! And we want them to!
We want them to have fun and enjoy the day so why not start off every day with some fun music to get us going! I mean, how many of us have a song or playlist we jam out to in the mornings or before a work out to get us psyched and ready? Why not give our kids that same experience?
Here are the songs included in our morning arrival playlist: (click the image to download a PDF file of the songs!)
And for your listening experience, I’ve created a Spotify playlist for you!
Check out this video of our morning arrival (recorded LIVE in February 2020 prior to the pandemic). Morning arrival is similiar except we wear masks, santize hands upon entering the room and offer fist bumps, elbow bumps, and toe taps as greeting options!
For more information check out these posts:
Morning Arrival
Morning Work
Classroom Lighting
For more ideas for music in the classroom, check out these posts:
