Be a band: Pass out the instruments and sit on the floor with the children or march around the room, allow the children to experiment with the different sounds the instruments make and how they feel to hold them and use them.
Imagination's symphony: Requires only a tape or CD and your own imagination. Select classical music and play it for the children, talk about the instruments you hear and how they are held and played. Have pictures available so they can see what the instruments look like and how they are held. Ask the children who wants to play the stringed instruments, cello, violin, harp ect...who wants to play the drums, the wind instruments or horns, the clarinet, flute ect... You are the conductor (use real terms) after the first performance have one of the children take over as the conductor using their arms to guide the other children in the orchestra. This is a good activity for transition times, I like to use it between lunch and nap time to calm things down and get ready for a quieter time of the day. Be prepaired for questions you wouldn't expect, my children began asking about the composers lives, who they were, when they lived and how they wrote the music. They also began requesting composers by name and it was fun to watch them begin to develope their classical preferences.
Dance to the music: Offer the children different styles of music from time to time and just play the music and allow them to move to the beat. Children naturally move to the beat unlike adults who often worry they might look silly, silly is good when your a kid...get in there and be silly with them, it will be good for all of you to share some silly time. Play some country, jazz, rock, regae, classical, instrumental, nature sounds are good during nap time.
Cake walk concepts: Cake walk concepts incorperates music with a concept you are trying to teach in game form. Place cards on the floor with shapes, colors, numbers, animals, whatever concept you want to teach. Have the children each stand on one card then start the music. When the music stops choose a child to tell you what the picture on their card is, or ask who is standing on red for example. Repeat the process so that each child has a turn to answer. If someone has trouble have the other children help them figure out what card they are standing on. This is a fun learning activity.
More to come soon....