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So you taught a folk song…. Now what? There’s many ways you can add instruments folk songs to make them more fun and help your elementary music students learn different musical concepts, and today we’re talking all about how to add instruments to folk songs.
If you’re looking to engage your students, instruments are one of the best ways! Use these ideas to engage students, teach musical concepts, and reinforce singing.
The ideas below are chosen so that you can add them to almost any folk song, and I’ll give some suggestions of ones that I like to use with each one.
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Keep the Beat with Instruments
The first way to incorporate more instruments with your folk songs is to keep the steady beat! This works with any grade level and any song. We do A LOT of beat keeping with the younger students, but it works with any grade.
Here’s a few ways to keep the beat and make it interesting:
- Keep the beat with an instruments
- Have different instruments each play one line of the folk song, then let students switch instruments (rhythm sticks play on line 1, egg shakers on 2, etc)
- Keep the beat on the xylophone, but students choose their melody (put it in pentatonic!)
- Use small percussion, and keep the beat different ways mirroring the teacher or a student (tambourines can shake, tap different parts of your body, etc)
- Use rhythm sticks, small drum, or other small percussion and more around the room while you play.
This can be done with any folk song, but here’s a few that I typically use for this:
Practice the Rhythm with Folk Songs
After the beat, it’s time to play the rhythm! Just have students play the rhythm of the folk song on instruments.
To make it more interesting, students could play the rhythm differently– maybe using rhythm sticks and playing the quarter notes sticks together and the eighth notes on the carpet, etc.
I do this with every folk song but here’s some I like using:
Identifying rhythms
To play instruments but make it more interesting, switch who plays what rhythm! For this, have groups of students with different instruments. Have on group play each rhythm.
For example, if we’re playing Love Somebody, I use:
- Rhythm sticks on the eighth notes
- Drums on the quarter notes
- Egg shakers on the sixteenth note
This is a great activity if you just learned a new rhythm, because students really have to think about what the rhythms are.
Then students can switch instruments, so they get to play multiple instruments!
Pro tip: Draw boxes around the rhythms to color coordinate them as a differentiation tool!
Favorite folk songs to use with this:
Playing Ostinati
Ostinatos? Ostinati? I looked it up, and both are grammatically correct, so take your pick.
An ostinato is a short, repeated pattern that you play while singing or playing something else.
I typically pick 1-3 ostinati to play along with a song, depending on the age group.
When choosing an ostinato, it’s helpful to add words to it to help students remember the pattern. “A tisket a tasket” is easier to remember than “titi ta titi ta”.
We always start ostinati by having everyone playing all of them on body percussion. Then I will have everyone play them on one instrument. Then I will have two groups (physically separate them!) playing two different ostinati on different instruments. If that goes well, then add more groups. But especially with younger students, start with two! You can even have one group start, then add the second. The name of the game is SCAFFOLDING.
A few favorite folk songs of ostinati (The links go to blog posts explaining the ostinati we use!)
Adding Chords to Folk Songs
Next up– let’s talk about chords! Playing chords is more for the upper grades, but students can play chords along with any folk song that has chord changes.
This works with anything that has at least 2 chords.
You can have them play these on ukulele, piano, or even boomwhackers. For boomwhackers, I’ll put the name of the chord, plus the note of the chord in a hula hoop so students know what to play.
So if you’re playing the C chord, I’ll put the letter “C”, plus the boomwhackers for C, E, and G in the red hula hoop. On the board, I’ll color coordinate as well, so I’ll put a red box around the part with the C chord. Everyone at the red hula hoop plays.
It’s easiest to have students keep the beat, and this is a simple way to practice beat with older students while keeping it interesting!
A few songs to play chords with:
Add a B section
Now let’s get creative and add a B section! Sing the folk song, then have students play rhythms or melodies for an added B section.
You can have them create their own B section, write it on the board, add words and play the rhythm of the words, and more.
You can even have them improvise the b section. For this, I like to pick a few words related to the lesson. For the song “Que Llueva”, we will use the words rain (quarter note) and llueva (eighth notes). We sing the song, then on the B section, we will play egg shakers (because it sounds like rain) and the students will make up patterns with the words rain and llueva (rain in Spanish) for 8 beats. Then we go back to the song.
Favortive song to add a B section:
There’s a few ways you can add instruments to folk songs! A lot of time, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Just add something and go from there.
Looking for more ideas?
Check out ways to play more instruments in this blog post.
Happy teaching!
Becca
