These days, kids are far more sophisticated and hip to pop culture than we were at their age. I discovered this first hand when I started volunteering in my sons’ classrooms as a music teacher, and I soon realized that traditional kids’ music turned off even the kindergarteners. It was fine as long as I was doing fun ‘extra’ music – there’s plenty of upbeat pop music with clean lyrics and not to much ‘mushy stuff.’ But teachers wanted more than fun, they wanted the music time to reinforce curriculum.
My older son’s 4th grade teacher came to me with a musical she’d found online about the California gold rush, and she asked if I could use my time more efficiently by teaching those songs – which included historic details but sounded like something from Romper Room (or “Barney,” for those of you too young to remember Romper Room). As it was, by 4th grade these kids could have made eye-rolling into an Olympic event, and I realized there was no way I would survive trying to teach them the equivalent of “I love you, you love me.”
Before I had kids, I was a full-time music director and had written a number of comedy songs and musicals for adults, so I decided to try my hand at writing something that would satisfy the teachers and yet appeal to the kids. I wrote a rock musical about California history and the kids actually got excited about singing the songs! (Granted, that was less about my writing and more a result of the screaming electric guitar accompaniment, but hey, when you’re trying to appeal to jaded nine-year-olds, you do what you can!)
While you may not find fun-yet-educational-music on the Billboard Top 40, fortunately Songs For Teaching is a great resource, connecting teachers with music that will make them AND their students happy. And if those songs can sneak in some great information, all the better – think of it as the musical equivalent of hiding pureed spinach in spaghetti sauce!
Here are a couple of examples –
Learning about coins: Marvelous Money
Early science: Life Cycles
Telling Time: It’s About Time
Click here for more great songs by Lauren Mayer
Lauren Mayer draws on her experience as a children’s musical composer, a school music teacher and a mom to create award-winning educational music for a variety of subjects. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University, where she studied composition, conducting, and music theory, and she has taught school music, choir, and theatre for grades K-12.