Winter, Holiday and Christmas Repertoire
The most frustrating thing about Christmas songs is being suddenly asked to teach repertoire with concepts our students haven’t learnt yet; Jingle Bells with dotted rhythms anyone? And if they have a version that has changed the dotted rhythm, we have more problems because they know the sound of the dotted rhythm version! Just before Christmas is not the time to learn new concepts just because it happens to be in a Christmas song.
So what repertoire is available to our students? I’m not necessarily thinking about repertoire for a recital, but repertoire you can do with your piano or musicianship students that are appropriate to their level, to their solfa tone set they have worked on so far and we can do as a fun one-off (or more) lesson.
There are lots of lovely resources for pre-readers online but I’ve pulled together some little Christmassy ideas below.
Suitable Songs
Stars are most definitely Christmassy, so Starlight Star Bright is perfect. There are about three different versions with different tone sets, here’s a blog post with the version I use. This version has just so and mi which is perfect almost from the very beginning.
Another song that is instantly Christmassy is the Categories Game. It’s usually played as a circle game which could also work in a one to one lesson by taking it in turns. I play this with claves and it’s a spoken chant while tapping a beat. The “X” I’ve typed below is when we tap the claves.
Person 1: Categories X X
Person 2: Which one? X X
Person 1 or the next person has to give a category, then go around the circle with each person naming a thing in the category to the beat until someone can’t think of anything. So why no Christmas categories! You could have Christmas food (turkey, mince pies…), Christmas weather, Christmas presents… although that one is likely to stump then because there’s six presents they want and they can only say one!
Alter known songs
You can take a song they already know (or even one they haven’t learnt yet) and change the words to make it Christmassy. I use “Santa Santa” to the tune of doggie doggie:
Santa Santa where’s your sleigh?
Someone stole it yesterday
Who stole your sleigh?
I stole your sleigh
If they’ve already done Doggie Doggie they’ll find it funny that you’ve changed the words to make it christmassy or you can teach it as a new song. And of course, you can change the words to fit other holidays or seasons, Easter, Summer, Spring…
You can also turn Rain is Falling Down can turn into “Snow is Falling Down”
Snow is Falling Down
Snow is Falling Down
Flitter flutter flitter flutter / floating snowflakes floating snowflakes
Snow is Falling down
Our Doremi member have also shared some excellent ideas: “Reindeer Reindeer where’s your hay?” for Doggie Doggie. The Food Song: carrots peas and cabbages, peaches plums and pineapples, yogurt jelly orange juice and Christmas cake! Want to join in the fun? Try it for £1 for 14 days here.
Differentiate for Levels
Another tip I have is to take one song and differentiate it for different levels.
I did this with I Have Made a Christmas List from the Christmas Kodály Songbook by Judith Johnson available in the BKA bookstore.
After verse one, I ask my students to decide what they would like on their Christmas list and we change the words to “may I have [princess dress/pink gloves/their choice of present] please”. It works really well in shared lessons because they get to choose one thing each and decide on one together. If they can’t agree on the third thing, that’s when I get to choose and I get something which is when I get to say I like orange Matchmakers and if you do this a few weeks before Christmas hopefully at the end of term you get a whole load of orange Matchmakers! Although this hasn’t worked for me yet…
We try to put the word “please” in as much as possible. Adding the word “please” is helpful for making the words scan well and we also have to have a little discussion about how to turn their 16 word description of what they would like into something that will fit into the song. We do this on a whiteboard numbering it as one, two and three.
I differentiate it for different levels because I want to make sure they use the solfa they already have in their repertoire so far. If the song has solfa or groups so solfa they haven’t learnt yet, for example if it has “so la” on a titi but you haven’t covered it yet, you could alter it to “la la” on the titi.
However you adapt it, you can then work on it together to discover the rhythm, the shape of the melody and then the solfa. Then your student can write it out in stick notation. Here’s a snippet of I did with one of my students:
And then we played it on the piano!
If they haven’t learnt la yet they could just sing so and mi. Tweak it! They don’t know the song already and we can make it fit what we need. You can also write down what they have said to practice at home and a bonus is the parents get to see what they would like if they haven’t already found out! Although some of the present suggested might be a bit ambitious…
If there are any pitches they haven’t learnt yet, they could just sing the words of that bit for now. That’s the beauty of singing and playing! Make sure you sing it at an appropriate pitch though. If they play so and mi on a C sharp and B flat, singing “mi re do” is going to be too low, so go for the higher black key skip.
That'll do for now!
I have more ideas which I’ll share in a later blog post. I’d love to hear if you’ve found this useful and if you use any of the ideas. That will be a Christmas present to me that beats orange Matchmakers!
Want more advice and ideas?
If you found this blog useful, please comment below or if there is anything you would like to say to me about it. If you’d like to find out more about teaching Christmas and holiday repertoire and much more, including over a year’s worth of lesson plans for teaching all the important musical skills with Helen’s clear microsteps, why not try out Doremi Membership for 14 days for just £1?
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