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Are you looking for some really fun Christmas lessons? I feel like I am always looking for ideas, and I have a hard time narrowing down the amount of songs that are available for the holidays. I was looking for a song that was common enough that I wanted all of my students to know, but different enough that not all of them would know it. Oh Christmas Tree was the perfect combination or common but unknown by my third graders.
And you know what? In the first two classes I have used this song with, I had a total of about 5 students that knew it.
You could use this song to work on low sol (each line goes sol-do) or for teaching dotted eighth note sixteenth note rhythms. But you know that I used this song for? Fun.
And that is ok.
I am using some of my other songs to push concepts we are working on, but for this one we just had fun.
And we had a lot of fun.
If you are looking for a a bunch of Christmas ideas, check out my Christmas in the Music Room Bundle on TPT.
If you don’t want that many ideas, you can check out the links and see the individual products that are in the bundle.
Oh Christmas Tree
So how do I play the game?
- First, teach the students the song Oh Christmas Tree. You can see the sheet music in Beth’s Music Notes here or get my free lyric sheets (for projecting or printing) in my resource library here. If you do not have the password to the resource library, you can get it by joining my email list! Then you can get all of the free resources.
- Sing the song and focus on the contour. I love to use scarves and have students move the scarf up when the song goes up and down when the song goes down.
- Have students get into groups. It really doesn’t matter how many are in each group, but I like to do 2-4 for this game.
- Then, have one student stand with their arms straight out. This student is the Christmas tree.
- Sing through the song Oh Christmas Tree. During the first verse, have students decorate the Christmas tree in their group. Give them a box with a bunch of (non-pointy or breakable!) Christmas decorations. I went to the Dollar Store and bought garland, tinsel, and some ornaments with strings instead of hooks.
- During the next verse, have the students undecorated the Christmas tree.
- Then sing the next verse (or the first one again) and have a different student be the tree.
- Repeat as many times as desired.
Also read: Free Music Lesson: Bate Bate Chocolate
And there you go! This is super easy, super fun. I just left it there, but you could add some more things like:
- Decorating paper trees or plastic trees with rhythm or melodic composition ornaments like these
- Read a Christmasy book like this one or this one which is a super cute eBook with Phineas and Ferb! (I have not read them, so don’t hold me to how good they are, but the previews are cute!)
- Watch The Charlie Brown Christmas movie. I know this may be too religious for some schools, but man it is cute. If it is too Christmasy, then you can watch Frosty the Snowman which is not Christmasy.
What are you doing for Christmas in the music room? I am doing all of the lessons from my Christmas music bundle on TPT! Do your students know the song Oh Christmas Tree? Let me know in the comments?
Happy teaching!
