Hello!!

I just saw this thread this morning and planned to post to it before I saw Bonnie's gracious compliment. Thanks, Bonnie!

Some of my favorite work experiences were visiting with pre-school children at schools,community centers, church groups, private birthday parties etc. Although I rarely have time to do these presentations or other cultural presentations with older children anymore, I'm still interested in learning new material and will be following this thread with great interest. I'm happy to share some songs that I found children liked. Also, my daughter teaches kindergarten for the Pittsburgh {Pennsylvania} Public School District. I told her about this thread this morning when I saw it on the front page and she reminded me of certain songs. She also shared some other songs that were new to me. These kindergarten songs may also "work" for older pre-school children. However, some songs for kindergarten age children {usually ages 5-6 years old} are too complicated for most older pre-school children. I'm specifically thinking of color recognition songs that are sung as part of a circle game with one person or more than one person in the middle...

First, here's some general comments about pre-school/kindergarten age songs:

I've found that pre-school and kindergarten children prefer easy to learn {repetitious} songs that include physical movements or sounds that they can do. This age group also likes to sing songs that they KNOW regardless of the season or the occassion. For instance, I usually started a singing session or a musical instrument demonstration session with this age group by leading the children {and hopefully their teachers and other adult staff} in singing "Jingle Bells". I did this regardless of whether it was Christmas time or not. For this song, I usually handed out bells that the children could shake in accompaniment to the song. Btw, when I collect the bells or the other instruments after the hands-on presentation, I carried around a big colorful bag and told the children to say goodbye to the instruments as they put them in the bag. Another familiar song that I would lead the children in singing was the first verse of "Happy Birthday To You". We'd sing this song regardless of whether it was someone's birthday or not...

With regard to "The Wheels On The Bus", here is the song that I usually sing and have heard children singing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area:

The wheels on the bus go round and round
round and round
round and round
The wheels on the bus go round and round
all through the town.

The horn on the bus goes beep, beep, beep
beep, beep, beep
beep, beep, beep
all through the town.

The windshield wipers go swish, swish, swish
swish, swish, swish,
etc.

The driver on the bus goes move on back,
move on back move on back
etc

The baby on the bus goes waah! waah! waah!
waah! waah! waah!

repeat first verse.

**

I'll add more songs in my next posts to this thread.