I wrote many songs with children at Boston’s Condon School.
I started making music with children almost three decades ago, in the classroom of my daughter’s preschool. I also started co-writing songs with kids in that same room.
The very creative teacher, Terri Kelley, offered to transform the classroom’s indoor play structure into whatever the children most wanted. My daughter would have chosen a haunted house, but most of the kids voted for a castle. They spent about a month learning more about castles. So I sat with them in their circle and they helped me write a castle song.
I posed two questions, which turned into the song’s chorus: If I lived in a castle, I wonder how it would be? If I lived in a castle, I wonder who I’d see? The children responded by making a list of all the people they might see in a castle. Their answers became the verses. It was a simple structure, and it worked! I recorded the song on my first CD in 2001. You can hear it here.
The best source of material for songs for children is obviously … children! Spend time with one or more children, and you will soon learn what their passions are: their favorite activities, games, books and more. When I began doing songwriting residencies with grades K and 1 in the Boston Public Schools more than a decade later, I would ask the children to tell me their favorite things. Sometimes we’d focus on books, sometimes famous historic figures, sometimes things they cared about in the natural world, such as butterflies or dinosaurs.
Sometimes, there would be one particularly strong personality in a group, a kid with a serious obsession. That’s what happened in one classroom of children with special needs. They wrote a song with me about one little boy’s passion: ancient Egypt. I never recorded “The Ancient Egypt Dance,” but it was for sure a rocking classic!
With my first graders, usually I had the children fill out a form about one of their favorite topics. If it was a book, I’d have them write briefly what the book was about and why they liked it. I might have them say something fun about the main character. I always had them draw a picture about the book. I chose my song topics from among these forms, usually taking the time to find the child who seemed to care the most about their topic.
In one class, I met a girl who absolutely loved the book “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds. The Dot is about Vashti, who hates art because she believes she’s no good at it. She slams her paintbrush down on the paper and makes a huge dot. The teacher tells her that’s her art and she should sign it. From there, Vashti develops a passion for making art with dots. You can see a video of the dot song that I wrote with the class here.
Another class clearly was in awe of T-Rex dinosaurs, having just read a book about them. The children were mostly English Language Learners, and many had memorized the T-Rex book and could recite it back to me. I think probably some wording in the book became part of the song lyrics, but not so anyone would notice. You can find the T-Rex song here.
With younger children, sometimes songs arise a bit more spontaneously. One class of four-year-olds fell in love with the Three Little Pigs. The class was filled with Three Little Pigs décor, right down to the activity table, which was full of pigs and houses and wolves. When it came time to write a song, I told the children about opera, and said I wanted to have them help me write an opera about the Three Little Pigs.
I played two potential musical themes, and the children couldn’t decide which one they liked best, so we decided to use both. One became the tune about the pigs building their houses, the other became the tune of the wolf threatening the houses. The children helped transform the song into a theatrical activity that remains popular among kids I sing with! Here is the link to the Three Piggy Opera.
At another classroom of very young children, I brought in a dragon puppet. I told the children I’d like to write a song about the dragon and wanted their help. I asked them what they’d like to say to the dragon. One girl responded right away: “No Fire, dragon!” A hit song unfolded from there.
You can also find this song and others mentioned in this post on the major streaming services and at Songs for Teaching. Elsewhere in this blog, you can find more posts about the nuts and bolts of songwriting in the classroom. Just click on the “Songwriting” topic and all the posts will appear. But I mainly want to tell you that if you’re looking for inspiration for children’s songs, look no further than the kids!
