From basic black to an 80s-themed concert, find the perfect costume and attire for your elementary performing group. The goal is to give guidelines that will allow every student the chance to find what they need for the performance.
Check out Stage Decorations and
Concert Ready tips and ideas!
Having elementary students memorize music and be concert ready can be tricky and time-consuming. This post will give you multiple tips and techniques, including incentives, checklists, and games, for learning and memorizing music to prepare your students for a concert.
The Playlist…
Here are tips to help students learn their concert music. You can use teaching techniques, games, incentives, and challenges to keep the lessons varied and interesting.
Now that the melody/rhythms are sung correctly…
Amanda Gorman’s children’s books are the perfect inspiration for elementary music concerts and classroom activities. Here are a variety of Amanda Gorman music resources and ideas based on her books, Change Sings and Something, Someday.
The Playlist
With her poetry of words, Amanda Gorman’s “Change Sings” uses a story full of music vocabulary to invite children to be the change in the world with acts of kindness. Here are songs that fit into that theme.
Amanda Gorman’s book, “Change Sings”, inspired this new 3-part round song, The Change Is You, that uses an African proverb to begin the journey of a call to action to be the change in the world.
Written for younger singers, Change the World With Kindness reinforces the act of kindness themes in Amanda Gorman’s book, “Change Sings.”
With lots of repetition and sequencing, this easy-to-learn song is a perfect concert selection. The resource includes suggested movements and opportunities to create your own movement.
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If you’re looking for a classroom song about Earth Day, the environment, and making a difference or a sparkling elementary music concert selection that’s simple to learn and features students playing instruments, this is it!
Seeds of Change is a song about making a difference, an environmental call to action about caring for our outdoor spaces, set to a Latin-feel Orff arrangement with lots of maracas representing the “seeds.”
From backdrops to props, decorating your stage for concerts takes a lot of thought. Everyone’s performance venue is different. Teachers use walls, the front of the stage, items hanging from the ceiling, to nothing at all. Remember, if you use risers, any decorations behind them will be hidden when your students are there.
Table of Contents
Easy-to-make paper bag snowflakes. Students can help!
Some concerts may have a theme or color scheme that is used at other times of the year. You can often find these items at Dollar Tree and similar stores or more high-priced stores AFTER the holiday and on sale.
Fourth of July Decorations-Use for Veterans Day or general Patriotic Concerts
Summer Beach Theme in May/June-Use for beach/ocean-themed concerts.
The art specialist and music teacher collaborated for a beautiful student experience. The first-grade program was a take on “A Night Before Christmas.” The Art Specialist made the stage look like their school!
Spring or anytime you want flowers, get all the colors or patterns from Dollar Tree and create fun flower backdrops. Just glue 5 plates in a circle, add a big and small plate to the center. The green leaves might not be needed if they’re going to be covered up by risers the entire concert.
Get information for finger lights, black lights, flashlights, glowsticks, light-up drumsticks, and more!
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You might also like these other concert-related resources.
Are you looking for elementary concert lighting that dazzles? Here are ideas and resources for using blacklights, glowsticks, flashlights, fluorescents, and drumsticks that glow.
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Continue reading “How to Implement Dazzling Lights for that Fun Concert Vibe”
Planning an elementary music concert is a complicated process. Find teacher-tested tips for choosing your music, concert themes, teaching timelines, and logistics.
How do you plan for a successful elementary music concert?
Oftentimes big mistakes can be avoided by simply being aware of an essential element. Read through this page and you’ll find time and teacher-tested ideas that will get you going in the right direction.
Let’s start with when to introduce the music to your students.
There’s nothing worse than realizing you don’t have enough time to prepare your students for their concert. From the poll below, the winning timeline for a December concert…
Semester I: Early to mid-October (8 or more weeks out) is currently winning in the poll!
Don’t wait until after Halloween to begin teaching the music!
Semester II: Considering the answers from Semester I, you want to have 8 or more weeks for your students to learn and memorize their music.
Please take the POLL below! Thanks to all who participate!
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Choosing your elementary music concert songs and theme can be your biggest stumbling block.
And no two situations are the same related to who sings, the performing space, music budget (usually no budget), and the big one…
How to find songs my students will want to sing!
A typical program is about 45 minutes in length. Songs can last between about 45 seconds up to 2:30. But if your average song is 2 minutes, you would need 22 songs for that length of time.
WHAT? If people only knew.
Of course, there will be some transition time but really, an audience doesn’t want to watch too many minutes of kids getting on and off the stage or listening to narration. So if you need 18 songs, how are you going to do it?
If you teach at a school with large grade levels, you will probably have grade level concerts so “The Third Grade Spring Concert!” You might not have room for all the third grade at once so you would divide the songs by the number of performing “groups” that you would use.
The same idea is true if your school is smaller and you have more grade levels at one time so “The K-2 Spring Concert!” Maybe then kinders would sing together, then grade 1, and grade 2, so three groups. If you have 3 performing “groups” and if each group sang 5 or 6 songs, you’d be good to go.
Themes can be easier because it helps with song selection, what you ask your students to wear, and decorations. The theme should be broad enough to let you find the songs you need. If it’s too narrow (Frogs Are Fun), it’s going to be hard to find enough songs.
The Song Database page has some common themes and titles within the Google slide database and also below it on the page.
No theme though is a perfectly great way to include lots of activities that you’ve been doing in class. “The Spring Concert” could have singing, bucket drumming, recorders, ukes, etc. with a wide variety of songs and pieces and no over-arching theme.
These were my go-to tricks that might help you.
