Preschool Music & Active Movement: Firemen

For our Preschool Music & Active Movement class this week, we focused on Firefighter songs!

Here is the outline I used to teach our 45-minute class for 3-4 year olds. In addition to our preschoolers, we usually have a couple younger and older brothers and sisters join in too.  ;) 

1- Gathering time: play with musical instruments bin. This week I also brought out a set of boomwhackers for the kids to play with.

2- Welcome Song.

3- When I Sing LaLaLa by Janeen Brady. We do this and the welcome song with puppets:

4-  I introduced the theme and we talked about firetrucks we've seen. 

 I like to start with a song that gets the kids moving a lot because it helps everyone relax and focus at the same time.  I don't have any favorite firetruck action songs (feel free to recommend some!), and some fire stations have cars, so we used Drive My car from Laurie Bergner:

5- We talked about how firefighters are people just like them, and sometimes the get serious, or silly or even sleepy!  So I have a silly song to play our shaker eggs to today: Shake My Sillies Out from Raffia.  

6- I collected the shaker eggs and passed out rhythm sticks. We used the rhythm sticks to make a soft fire, a loud fire, and then put out the fire like firemen. 

7- Finger Play: 5 Little Firemen:  Make 5 firemen fingers and use your other hand to make a fire engine.  I taught the kids this combination sign (ASL) for "firetruck" and then we signed it every time we came to that part of the song.

8- Bells & Hurry, Hurry, Drive the Fire Truck:  I let each child choose two bells to play (one for each hand) at the end of each verse of this song. We reviewed how to play bells... and how not to play them.  The words are repetitive enough that they can sing along too, and alternating hands while playing (or attempting to play!) in rhythm is a skill that strengthens pre-reading, math, and coordination!

9- Parachute Fire: I tossed a few balloons and balls onto the parachute and we had to shake them off to put out the fire!

10- Firefighters! This parachute game is a twist on our shark game. To play, everyone put their toes under the parachute. One "firefighter" started out by going under the parachute. If he tickled someone's toes, they turned into a firefighter too! Once everyone was under the parachute, we played again. 

11- Walk Around by Nancy Kopman. We walk around holding onto the parachute and doing the suggested actions in this song:

12- Goodbye Song.

Happy Educating,

Carla

Have you seen HEEP? It is a preschool homeschool curriculum! Learn more here!

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