Preschool education in Singapore plays a critical role in the growth of your child. In a modern world where parents are ever busy, this early education stage has an essential role to play in the socialization of your child. As a parent, you can’t ignore the role of preschool. The top international preschools, such as Lorna Whiston Preschool, advocate parents’ involvement from this early education stage. This guide looks at the role of preschool songs for the classroom and circle time. It also explores some popular tunes every preschool teacher and parent should know.
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Critical Role of Music in Preschool
In pre-nursery school, music is a fundamental tool in the classroom. Music not only brightens classroom dynamics for kids but also reinforces basics such as rhyming and counting. Music helps to signal transitions, encourage interactions, help pre-schoolers wait out a delay, and deepens children’s sense of community.
Through music, kids learn melodies, language, and rhythms from different cultures. The songs also serve as mood boosters while also helping with literacy and numeracy. By using songs, pre-nursery teachers can also help with children’s sensory development.
Dancing and moving to these songs helps children build motor skills. These activities also allow kids to practice self-expression. There’s so much more preschool Singapore songs can do in the learning setting.
Music unlocks children’s early childhood development. During large group learning activities such as circle time, songs help create a relaxing environment. This is the best environment for learning and development to take place.
Categories of Preschool Songs for Circle Time
Circle time is one of the most popular activities in preschool. Circle time involves kids taking turns when learning new activities. It is a simple activity to boost learning and develop a sense of community.
Using songs is one of the smartest techniques used in international preschools in Singapore to get out the best of circle time and preschool learning. Through music, you can teach the planets, the alphabet, days of the week, the months of the year, and more.
The main categories of circle time songs are:
- Come to the Carpet Song: These songs help students wrap up fast and transition from the current activity to the carpet.
- A welcome song: Simple, fun, engaging songs that make children feel welcome
- Weather Watcher Song: Songs that signal the weather helper to leave the carpet and move to the window to check the weather.
- Days of the Week and Months of the Year Songs: These are essential learning tools. They help your students stay up-to-date with dates and also learn months.
- Geography Songs that Teach: Simple songs to help children learn new places on the map while having fun.
- Name Game Songs: Children love hearing their names, and adding them to common songs will add to the fun at your preschool in Singapore.
- Brain Break Dance Songs: After a lengthy session, you can use break brain dance songs to break the monotony. These songs allow the brain and body to recharge and refocus.
- Fingerplays for Preschool: These are among the most popular preschool songs. The interactive jingles are also learning tools to help with rhyming skills, memory, improving coordination, building confidence, and more.
- Color songs: Colours are an important topic in early schooling, and they’re tough to teach. Using color songs is a straightforward way to help your students learn and love colors.
- Movement and Action songs: Circle time would be boring without some action, and this is where action music comes handy. These songs will get your students moving, dancing, learning, and laughing as they follow the beat.
Other Types of Preschool Songs
At the best preschool in Singapore, you’ll find a wide range of other games and songs that accompany classroom activities. These include:
- Rhyming songs
- Counting’s songs
- Goodbye songs
- Transitioning songs
- Seasonal Songs (including pumpkin and Halloween songs for kids, thanksgiving songs for kids, Christmas songs for kids, and winter songs for kids)
- Holiday Songs
- Animal songs
- Math songs
- Graduation songs
Popular Preschool Songs
Here are examples of preschool songs for the classroom and circle time as well as and other pre-nursery schools in Singapore:
- Walk Around
- Come to the Carpet Song
- Animal Farm
- The Pussycat: A Preschool Game to Teach Do Re Mi
- The Seven Days of the Week
- Seven continents, 5 Oceans
- The Treasure Game
- How Are You Feeling Today?
- Time for Circle
- Backward alphabet
- Peeping Through The Window
- What’s My Colour?
- The Soundbox
- What Is The Weather Today?
- Frère Jacques
- The alphabet song
- A Counting we will go
- Shape Up
- Pass The Color
- The itsy bitsy (or eensy-weensy) spider
- The wheels on the bus
- You are my sunshine
- Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
- Old Macdonald Had a Farm
- Days of the Week
Final Thoughts
With the advances in digital media, using preschool is now easier than ever before. You can find these and more songs online and use multimedia tools to accompany students singing in class. Of course, you first need to teach your students these songs. Help the kids understand the role each piece plays in their daily learning activities.
Featured Image by Kimberly Gordon from Pixabay
