One of my favorite things about spring (other than warmer weather and no snow), are rainy days! You know the saying, April showers bring May flowers! But in all seriousness, there are so many things to explore musically around rain! I’m sharing some of my favorite Rainy Day activities for the music room.
Songs
Let’s begin with some songs about the rain! Who doesn’t know Rain, Rain? I teach this song to my kindergarten students, then again to my older students while learning to play ukulele! It’s a simple, easy song to teach in music class.
Another wonderful song about the rain is Underneath My Big Umbrella. This song comes from the Jump Right In series and is attributed as a Japanese folk song. While researching the song, it seems to be a variation of the song Amefuri (A Rainy Day). I love to have students accompany the song with a simple bordun and use our spring drums and rain sticks to make the rain sounds with the song.
It Rained a Mist is a lovely American folk song in triple meter. I love to have to students explore moving to the macrobeats of this song, then the microbeats. How does their movement change? Think of taking big step from puddle to puddle, then smaller steps as they splash in the puddles. There are 4 verses to the song that lend themselves nicely to exploring levels of movement as well.
Pitter Patter is another easy American folk song to teach young children. I’ve seen several variations of this song, but I use the Jill Trinka version in my classroom. as it supports the range and notation goals I have for my students. I love to talk to my students about onomatopoeia – words that are formed or associated with a sound, like BANG or SPLASH. We talk about other words we might use to describe the rain besides pitter patter, then substitute them into the song.
Chants
Happiness is a chant about getting your rain gear on to go out to play in the rain! I love to have students explore macro and microbeat movement in this chant and follow up each repetition with rhythm pattern work in Duple meter.
Rainy Day is a chant I wrote for my early childhood music students, but it works wonderfully with Kindergarten students too! The emphasis on this chant is to get students coordinating their movement, breath, and chanting. You’ll see before each splash, there is a rest, to give students an opportunity to coordinate their movement and breath with the jump.
Dynamics
One of my ALL-TIME FAVORITE activities to do in music class is to read and act out the story, Listen to the Rain by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault. We talk about the three types of rain described in the story and connect each type to a dynamic level. From there, we get out wood mallets and dry erase boards and practice making each type of rain sound at different dynamic levels. It is magical! I created an entire resource around this activity so that you could explore dynamics in age-appropriate ways for different groups of students,
Notation
Want to work on reading rhythm notation with your students with a Rainy Day theme? Try Rainy Day Rhythms! Students can click on a raindrop to reveal a rhythm pattern! There are four different levels of rhythm patterns from basic eighth note, quarter note combinations to more challenging rhythms with sixteenth note combinations!
Song Tales
And in case you are looking for a story to end your class, check out some of my favorite children’s books about the rain!
Singing in the Rain by Tim Hopgood
Rain, Rain Go Away by Caroline Jayne Church
Tap Tap Boom Boom by Elizabeth Bluemle
Connect with me!