Here’s a BIG list of elementary movement activities for K-5 music with DETAILED lesson plans and creative options for your students. Music & movement activities inspire play! You’ll find movement activities that integrate with the Orff approach, Dalcroze, Kodaly, and First Steps in Music.
Finding GOOD elementary movement games & activities for grades K-5 can be a challenge. Ideas need to be engaging and repeatable. If they offer a creative component, they get the ALL-STAR status! Here are my best multi-layered lessons for some of my favorite movement activities.
The best movement activities are integral to a quality music education experience for children by providing ways to express, explore, and learn.
🎯 Key Takeaways
- Activities/lesson plans sorted by grade level
- K-5
- Prek-2
- 3-5
- Challenging Behaviors and Movement Ideas
- Movement Books & Music
- How-To Teach Movement Video
Table of Contents
PLEASE READ: Resource collections (especially older ones) need to be screened carefully for songs with a questionable past. Here’s a link to databases containing some of those songs.
Movement Ideas for Challenging Classes
Hesitant to use movement because of classroom management/behavior? Taking a Fall Walk is a good starter because I narrate what to do and you can be free to move around the room offering encouragement, assistance, and reminders.
Also, it frees you up to keep your eyes on every student! The students who are going to test the waters will keep an eye on you. Beat them to it and have your eye on THEM!
Limit who is up and moving.
- Give everyone a scarf
- Only certain colors get to move around the room
- The others participate from their seat
- With each return to the walking steady beat part, call out a new color.
Finally, the procedure needs to include the students understanding self-space (put a bubble around you) and moving quietly. (body and voice)
💡Try just the opening steady beat walk with different scarf color groups and praise those who managed self space and moving quietly. If enough get it right, try multiple groups together.
Finally, use activities that have students SHOW what they hear before they MOVE to it. Fast & Slow Tempo is a great example.
How to Use Movement to Teach Staccato & Legato
Watch this Orff-inspired video to discover easy and engaging multi-lesson movement activities for teaching staccato and legato in the elementary music classroom.
I’ve included some of my BEST time-tested tips & tricks!
Spotify Playlists for Elementary Music
This music is perfect for teaching opposites in the younger grades. Beat (beat/no beat, stop/start), Tempo (fast/slow), Dynamics (loud/quiet), Articulation (legato/staccato).
🔴 GRADE K-5 Elementary Movement Activities
Movement activities that appeal to this wide K-5 group are GOLDEN!
Body Shapes (K-5)
Body Shapes is all about students taking 3-5 minutes to move their bodies and relax their minds as they experience SEL through global music and movement as a class starter, brain break, or mindful way to transition to the next class or subject.
The resource includes NINE pieces and I’m excited to provide a GROWING list of songs on Spotify to add to that repertoire. Listen on Spotify or purchase the songs and add them directly to your PowerPoint.
Some of these images are of my older students who created shapes with a partner. I added their images to their classroom presentation of Body Shapes plus in some of the younger grades’ presentations.
Steady Beat Challenge (Grades K-5)
Get ready to move to macro and micro beats using half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes! 🎶 This follow-along video helps students explore creative movement using the viral rat dance craze and Chess music on TikTok and YouTube.
🔴 GRADE PreK-2 Movement Activities
PreK–2 music and movement lessons help younger students explore their creativity as they learn basic elements of music like rhythm, beat, and expressive qualities.
Moving to Greek Music (Grades Prek-2 or 3)
Get ready to move to this exciting movement activity with the classic Greek song from Zorba the Greek.
This video helps kids experience steady beat, a slow building tempo accelerando, and body percussion in an engaging way.
Perfect for music class, brain breaks, or cultural lessons, this interactive activity encourages students to listen, move, and respond to the changing tempo.
Moving to Irish Music (Grades Prek-2 or 3)
Alternating locomotor and non-locomotor movements give elementary music students the chance to experience this Irish jig (Kesh Jig) in a fun way.
Great all year long but especially fun for St. Patrick’s Day in March.
Lesson ideas: 🍀 Keeping a steady beat 🍀 Movement changes at phrases/sections to help students begin to sense musical form. 🍀 A great way to discuss micro and macro beats with skipping. Skipping to the macro beat and micro beat feel very different. 🍀 Creative movement. i.e. stomping can be all on one foot, or patterns using right and left. Jumping can be facing one direction, turning, or again with micro or macro beat.
Kindergarten & First Grade Movement With Easy Piano
Here’s a simple movement idea you can introduce in October and keep using all year. It helps students explore beat, tempo, melodic direction, rhythm, and dynamics—and it works even if you don’t play piano!
Start with a descending bass line at a moderate tempo. Have students walk in their personal space, keeping the beat and stopping on your signal. As they improve, add tempo changes to challenge focus and listening.
Later, introduce a “spooky riff” (C minor, F minor, G7) with a descending C minor scale. IN VIDEO! Students respond with movement that matches melodic direction—rising for higher notes and lowering as the music descends.
This adaptable activity teaches musical concepts through motion and can be repeated throughout the year.
👉 Tip: This is a great lead-in to later lessons on melodic contour, dynamics, or phrasing.
Movement for Fast & Slow Tempo (Grades Prek-2)
Use this 2 part activity to let students “Listen and SHOW” then “Listen and MOVE” to instrumental tempos of fast and slow.
Choo Choo Boogaloo (Grades Prek-2)
This movement activity lets kids experience tempo, beat, and accelerando with the zydeco fun of accordion and washboard by Buckwheat Zydeco and his band.
Taking a Fall Walk (Prek-Grade 2)
This movement activity is all about integrating
- steady beat
- walking
- twirling
- floating
- bending
All while highlighting downward melodic direction and tempo changes.
First Footprints (K-3)
Students will love creating verses to this bouncy song about first footprints or tracks that can be seen on a walk.
Use the Full Play mp3 or the easy Orff arrangement as you hop like a bunny, run like a dog, or swing like a child.
Kangaroo from Carnival of the Animals (Prek-3)
Elementary movement video for younger students with Kangaroo from the Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns.
Movement objectives include smooth-sharp, light-heavy, fast-slow, up-down, and phrase same/different for hearing beginning form.
Move Like An Animal (Prek-Grade 2)
Creating Movement
- Class-Find consensus and create as a whole group.
- Small Groups #1-Using the form, small groups can create body percussion/movement to go with each section.
- Small Groups #2-Assign different sections to each group. Have the entire class have the same movement for the intro and coda for a whole-part-whole feel.
- Props– Have groups of 6 or so take a long piece of fabric and create moves.
Older kids LOVE working with big pieces of fabric!
The fabric should be at least 48″ wide and 8′ long. If you had enough small parachutes, that would work too. I kept 2 groups in the room to work and sent to to the hall. I stood in the doorway so I could watch all at once. 🤪 I’ve done this SO successfully. Obviously, you can go up/down and side to side, but also the kids can create locomotor movements and even turn the fabric inside out as kids go over and under. The possibilities are endless.
All In One (K-3)
I did these activities EVERY YEAR! They were foundational to instilling a creative mindset in my students by learning about the acceptance and freedom of exploring their creativity!
Listen to song #1 “All In One” on Apple Music.
Lesson Plan for “All In One” – Beat and No Beat
- Tell your kindergarten, first, or second-grade students to step to the beat as soon as they hear the music.
- When the music changes, float.
Those two styles alternate in varying lengths on this track. Subsequent lessons could include (for beat/no beat)
- be a rabbit/bird
- tap hands with partner/float to a new space
- be raindrops/clouds
- use props such as partner parachutes or scarves to show what they hear
- partners choose un-pitched percussion instruments to show the beat and no beat and take turns playing
There are at least 5 more songs on this one CD that are that easy to use and some of them are for older students too.
Moving to Irish Music (Grades K-2)
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Moving to Beat | No Beat (Grades K-2)
Moving to Jazz – Body Awareness (Grades K-2)
Steady Beat Activity With Crazy Frogs (Grades K-2)
Seven Jumps (K-1)
There are several ways to play. Kids love the cumulative nature of it!
Highway #1 (K-2)
Students pretend to start their car and then when the singing begins, they step around Australia on Highway #1. They stop at different cities in Australia and have different moves to make. From the collection: Children’s Dances of Terra del Zur, Vol. 1 (paid link)
- walk walk and run run run
- heel and toe and stamp
- side together wiggle
- jump jump and clap clap clap
- skip skip and bump
- gallop gallop jump
- hop hop hop and stomp
This video is so great for moving in place! After doing it this way, maybe try lots of locomotor movement throughout the room.
The Shenanigans Music (Grades K-2)
🔴 GRADE 3-5 Movement Games & Activities
Build on foundational skills with elementary music movement activities designed for Grades 3–5. These lessons encourage older students to explore music interpretation through movement, with options for group choreography, rhythmic games, and Orff-based activities that promote ensemble work and creativity.
Star Wars Body Percussion (Grades 3-5)
Engaging movement for your older elementary students can be hard to find! This activity using Buckethead’s Star Wars rendition is sure to spark your older students’ interests with body percussion movements, some Chewbacca sound effects, and then the chance to create their OWN movements using the piece’s form to help.
Bump Up Tomato (Grades 3-5)
Get the music to Bump Up Tomato and more ideas on the Game Page!
Great Movement Books & Music
Music for Creative Dance-Eric Chappelle (K-5)
I was introduced to this series of CDs in my Orff levels and CD #1 is golden! The composer, Eric Chappelle writes music with lots of variation in tempo, dynamics, tone color, etc. which is PERFECT for movement.
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Down in the Valley (book) by the Amidons (K-5)
Favorites
- I Let Her Go Go (A)
- Down In the Valley (A)
- Alabama Mississippi (P)
- Charlie Over the Ocean (P)
Step Lively (book) by Marian Rose (K-5)
Favorites
- Kinderpolka (P)
- Sasha (I)
- Ozark Rag (I)
- Bingo (A)
For use with K-5, Music For Creative Dance: Contrast and Continuum, Vols. 1 – 4 features pieces with contrasts in tempo, texture, and other musical elements while other pieces create a continuous flow of music.
Rise Sally Rise (coming soon)
Round De Doo Bop (coming soon)
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