Songs & music tips
for ESL kids teachers
Songs & music tips to use in your ESL kids classes
Tips and ideas for using songs and music in your kids English lessons!
Great kids songs to download
Here at ESL KidStuff we have 50 great songs specially made by us for teaching English to children. Click here for the songs.
Each song is based on a theme that can be easily taught in your classroom. We have covered (and often enhanced) old classics like the ABC song, The rainbow song and Head, shoulders, knees and toes, as well as created brand new songs to cover topics such as numbers, weather and a “Can you…?” song.
Each song comes with a song poster, word sheet and songs notes – the song notes in particular are very useful as they give ideas for gestures and activities to do during the song as well as giving lesson plans to use with each song. There are also video versions of each song available. All songs are free to download for our members.
10 little elephants
From our “Animals” flashcards section, print out the black & white elephant ten times. Have you students [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] each elephant a different [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us]. Every time you play this song in class, first elicit each [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] of the elephant flashcards and put them on the board or floor in a line. Then use them during the song to count the elephants (point at each elephant as the song counts). There is also a song sheet to accompany the song: 10 little elephants song sheet.
Christmas carols for ESL young learners
This page has some great ideas for adapting Christmas carols to an ESL young learners class: Christmas carols adapted for children learning English. It includes new (ESL kids friendly) versions of ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’, ‘Silent night’ and ‘Jingle bells’.
Head, shoulders, knees & toes song
We all know this one, “Head, shoulders, knees & toes” with all the actions. After running through the song once, have some speed rounds where everyone sings and does the actions as quickly as possible. Then try it backwards (“Toes, knees, shoulders & head, shoulders & head…”)! Great fun! (Head, shoulders, knees & toes song sheet).
