Last month, the City of Chicago and educators around the globe celebrated Ella Jenkins’s 100 birthday. If you grew up listening to borrowed albums, tapes, or CDs from your local library, I guarantee that Ella Jenkins has touched your life. If you’ve been to a state or national early learning conference, there is a good chance that  Ella Jenkins was the keynote speaker!

Click on the image below to hear “Sweet Ella Jenkins,” an original song celebrating the 100th birthday of “The First Lady of Children’s Music.” Written and performed by songwriter and preschool teacher Greg Gardner (aka Mr. Greg), with musical accompaniment by Ben Sigelman and harmonizing vocals by the Chapin sisters, “Sweet Ella Jenkins” contains lines from Jenkins’ classic songs. This catchy new song is a heartfelt and engaging tribute to the woman who taught us all to “sing a song together.”

Here are just a few of the song’s lyrics:

“You sing the song, we sing it right back,

A call and response with a rhythmic clap,

Our voices all blend, and our toes start to tap.

Tap to the tune of Miss Mary Mack,

And we all sing along, yes, we all sing along,

With the first lady of children’s folk songs.”

If I have learned one thing from listening to Ella Jenkins, it is the effectiveness of call-and-response singing and chanting. Jenkins is a master at call-and-response singing and uses it often in her music. She recognizes that the interactive nature of call and response helps maintain the attention and focus of children by inviting them to respond to the leader’s prompts. Call and response breaks up the monotony of passive listening and keeps children actively involved in the learning process.

Click on the image below to hear songs from Ella Jenkins’ first album. Released in 1957, it features simple call-and-response chants from the U.S. and Africa, adapted for young children. The album launched Jenkins’ long and successful career as one of Smithsonian Folkways Recording’s most beloved artists.

Call-and-response songs help children develop self-regulation skills by requiring them to pay attention and take turns. Songs like “Miss Mary Mack” and “Did You Feed My Cow” foster cooperation and group processes.

The repetition and rhythm in these songs make it easy for very young children to remember the sequence of patterns. As they learn to anticipate these patterns and the sequences of events or objects, children build early math skills.

Educators worldwide have seen the emotional and social connections that form when we use call and response in our classrooms. The responsive nature of this activity creates a sense of community, fosters a positive learning environment, and makes learning more enjoyable while creating trust and friendship.

Call and response fosters social interaction and collaboration. It encourages children to work together and take turns, which helps them develop social skills. Repeating phrases or information through call and response can enhance memory and recall.

Click on the image below to hear Jenkins’ infectious song, “Get Moving.”

Music holds a powerful place in the human brain—and singing utilizes the brain’s language and music areas. When children actively listen to music, multiple brain areas light up! 

Music and movement are powerful tools that we can use daily to reinforce math concepts, and the more senses that children employ as they participate in this activity, the more they learn. A five-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute found that using music in early childhood accelerates brain and language development, speech perception, and reading skills.

I remember the Jenkins song, “Counting Games and Rhythms for the Little Ones,” from my own kindergarten days. Jenkins’ songs are great teaching tools for those of us who are fostering early math skills such as counting, patterns, rhythm, and basic arithmetic in early learners. Math, set to music, leads to a deeper grasp of numerical concepts.

Click on the image below to hear it!

My favorite kindergarten game was singing along with Jenkins as she taught us “Johnny Had One Friend.” We skipped around and grabbed the hand of a friend as she reinforced our counting skills with “Johnny Has Two Friends.” We stood on the carpet and recited “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.” We practiced our fine motor skills by repeating “Two Little Black Birds.” When you can remember anything from kindergarten, you know it was a powerful moment!

“Wake up, little sparrow, come join the choir,

Sing a song for a lady we all admire, 

Her heart’s been beating for a full century, 

And these songs will live on for eternity.

Let’s raise a glass to a woman with class

And sing with sweet Ella Jenkins.”

Join us in celebrating the gift of Ella and her music! Play it loud, sing it louder, and let’s all sing a round of Miss Mary Mack!

Happy 100th birthday, Ella Jenkins, from all of us here at Early Math Counts and countless early childhood educators around the globe. Thank you for all that you have taught us over the years. We are forever grateful!

We also use songs to work on vocabulary, memory and repetition. This week, the children asked if they could sing the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” over and over again.

It’s fun to watch children of different ages and abilities participate in this activity. The beauty of this song is that everybody loves it. Everyone feels successful and happy, regardless of their developmental level, their physical coordination or their ability to anticipate and execute the moves.

When children sing songs like “The Wheels on the Bus,” the music and movement stimulate so many areas of the brain that learning is enhanced by as much as 90 percent. Physical movement also enhances memory and recall.

When I see students singing and laughing their way through “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” or “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,” I know that they are developing physical skills such as balance, spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination, as well as social skills such as cooperation and taking turns.

Children also learn how to think, explore, work things through and develop their language and self-expression skills as they sing and dance or play an instrument.

Have you ever heard a child make up all of the words to a song as they sing it? That’s brain development in progress!

Using songs in your daily routines can help you meet the math standards for early childhood education. Keep it light, easy and age-appropriate! Sing loud, sing often and sing off-key! The children don’t care. That won’t be what they remember. They will remember the words to the song, which will lay a strong foundation for their future math learning.

We use songs to work on vocabulary, memory and repetition. This week, the children have begged to sing the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” over and over again.

It’s fun to watch the different levels of coordination, anticipation and expectations as children of different ages and abilities participate in this activity. The beauty of this song is that everybody loves it. Everyone feels successful and happy, regardless of their developmental level.

When children sing songs like “The Wheels on the Bus,” the music and movement stimulate so many areas of the brain that learning is enhanced by as much as 90 percent! Physical actions and exercise also enhance memory and recall.

When I see students singing and laughing their way through “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” or “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,” I know that they are developing physical skills like balance, spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination.

Social skills like cooperation and taking turns, as well as the shared experience of learning how to dance and play with friends is simple and fun.

Children also learn how to think, explore, work things through and develop their language and self-expression skills as they sing and dance or play an instrument.

Have you ever heard a child make up all of the words to a song as they sing it? That’s brain development in progress!

Using songs in your daily routines can help you meet the math standards for early childhood education. Keep it light, easy and age-appropriate! Sing loud, sing often and sing off-key!

The children don’t care. That won’t be what they remember. They will remember the words to the song, which will lay a strong foundation for their future math learning.

Sing and clap along to the tune of “Bingo.” 

There was a boy with dark brown eyes and Timmy was his name – O!

T – I – M – M – Y,

T – I – M – M – Y,

T – I – M – M – Y and Timmy was his name!

“Sing my name song next!” cries Evani.

“Please, can we sing my name song too?” implores another classmate of Timmy’s.

Do you play the Name Game? I simply take a familiar children’s tune, add a personal note if needed and spell out each child’s name to that tune.

I started playing this game more than 20 years ago because music plays a powerful role in brain development. One five-year study by a team of University of Southern California neuroscientists showed that music instruction accelerates brain development in young children—particularly in the parts of the brain responsible for processing sound, language development, speech perception and reading skills.

Children love the patterns and rhythms of songs. Setting words to music helps children learn them more quickly and retain them longer. Even a one-year-old will beam with pride the instant you start singing their tune. They may not be able to talk, but they know their name song!

Research also shows a connection between music and math in brain development. Musical patterns, rhythms and tempo make it easier for children to learn mathematical concepts such as sequencing, simple counting and patterns.

Emphasizing the steady beat of a song by clapping or moving to the music helps children master the concept of one-to-one correspondence (the understanding that each object in a group can be counted once and only once).

Music also helps build early literacy skills and promotes social-emotional development. The Name Game helps children learn through play as they explore the letters that make up each child’s name. When we start simply by inserting the letters of a child’s name into the Name Game, we give these letters personal meaning, which will incentivize the child to remember them.

As we play the Name Game, we are building a strong foundation for later literacy development activities such as letter recognition, letter names and letter sounds.

There is something magical about the Name Game and its capacity to keep children engaged for extended periods of time.

Musical rhythms sharpen developing attention skills. The fun of singing your own name song and the name songs of all of your friends can make learning joyful. The Name Game became a tradition at our center to keep the children entertained and happy while lunch was being prepared and served.

Here’s a “cheat sheet” to help you get started with the Name Game.

“The Wheels on the Bus” is a great song for three-letter names:

The letters in my name go J – O – E,  J – O – E,  J – O – E,

The letters in my name go J – O – E, 

That spells JOE!

Four-letter names work well with the “Happy Birthday” song: 

K – O – B – E, 

K – O – B – E,

My name is Kobe,

K – O – B – E.

“Bingo” is my go-to song for five-letter names.

Six-letter names work well with “Polly Wolly Doodle” or “Pat-a-Cake.”

Seven-letter names pair well with “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Eight-letter names work great with the song, “Muffin Man”

Nine-letter names? Try “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

You get the idea! Let’s give it a try. Pick a child in your class (maybe the one who rocks your boat just a little bit, because we all have one and it’s to our advantage to have this child on our team.)

If you get stumped, head to your CD collection for inspiration and grab Taj Mahal, Ella Jenkins, Raffi or whatever song is a classroom favorite. This is the perfect opportunity to add music from the cultures that are represented in your classroom. Reach out to parents to ask for a favorite childhood song that you can match up to their child’s name. They will love you for it, I promise!

You can also use chants. The children who first played the Name Game in my classroom are in their mid-twenties now, but they still remember the song or chant that they used for each classmate!

Here are some examples to get you started:

M – A – D – I – S – O – N…Madison, Madison is our friend.

C – O – N – N – O – R…Our friend Connor is a soccer star!

Chants are a great place to start because you only need to rhyme with the last letter of the child’s name. You can also sneak the letters into the middle of the sentence if they have a hard letter to rhyme with, like the dreaded letter X!  Some letters, like W, will trip you up because that letter has three syllables. Take it slow, you won’t come up with these in a single night. Find a friend who can rhyme on a dime (haha) or a friend with a musical background. Friends like these can be extremely helpful when you are struggling with a name that’s difficult to set to music.

Each child believes they own their song, which they do. I try not to use the “Bingo” tune for more than one child in my class at a time. This may seem like an overwhelming task if you have a large class, so keep it simple. Maybe start with the first kids to be dropped off or the last to get picked up. Make sure you write down the tune and the words as they come to you. You will need your own cheat sheet in the beginning for reference.  

When children are actively listening to music, multiple areas in their brains are lighting up. By adding clapping, marching or other movements, we develop other areas of the brain. The more senses we use, the more we learn!

Give it a try. I promise you, it works like magic! If you’d like to add to my cheat sheet, make a comment below and we will start our own list to share with one another. Good luck!

Interested in other activities that help build early math skills?

• You’ll find some great counting songs in the Music and Movement section of our Noodle Cadoodle Counting lesson plan.
• Check out the Music and Movement section of our Monkey Mania lesson plan to pair music with counting and help children understand the concept of subtraction.
• Finally, our What’s in a Name? lesson plan offers more activities to foster the development of early math skills as children count, compare, contrast and graph the number of letters in their names. 

Click on Connect with Families on the left side of each lesson page, download the parent letter included with each lesson, personalize it for your class and your math curriculum for the week is complete!

I watch as two-year-old Thalhah works his way through a 60-piece puzzle. I’ve seen this child spend hours quietly working his way through puzzle after puzzle—which leads me to wonder if some children are just better at solving puzzles than others. Is puzzle-solving an innate skill? Or can any child become a puzzle master?

In his 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Harvard University psychologist and neuroscience professor Howard Gardner proposed that people have many different kinds of “intelligences.”

Gardner believes that there are nine intelligences, including visual-spatial intelligence, linguistic-verbal intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and naturalistic intelligence. He also suggested that there may be a ninth type, which he referred to as “existentialist intelligence.” These various types of intelligence, according to Gardner, exist in different individuals in varying degrees and emerge over time.

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences can provide a helpful framework as you observe how your students approach learning. You’ll gain insights that will enable you to assess your early learners and their different learning styles in an entirely new way and help you determine the best learning environment and activities for each child.

So grab a piece of paper and a pencil! Many of your students’ names will come to mind as you read this post and reflect on the different ways that each child thinks, solves problems and learns.

VISUAL-SPACIAL INTELLIGENCE (Picture Smart)

Students with high spatial intelligence think and process information in pictures and images. They have excellent visual-receptive skills and fine-motor skills. They like to build with Legos, read maps and do jigsaw puzzles, which they can visualize accurately and abstractly.

BODILY-KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE (Body Smart)

Students who possess bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are keenly aware of the world as they explore it through touch and movement. Their bodies and minds work in harmony and they can control their bodies with grace, expertise and athleticism. These children can be taught through physical activity, hands-on learning and role playing. 

MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE (Music Smart)

Musical students think, feel and process information primarily through sound. They are sensitive to sounds in their environments, and they may learn better with music playing in the background. They can be taught by turning lessons into lyrics, speaking rhythmically and tapping out time.

INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE (People Smart)

Students with a high level of interpersonal intelligence have a natural ability to interact with, relate to and get along with others. They are good leaders. These students learn through interaction. They have many friends, show empathy for others and possess “street smarts.” They often learn best by engaging in group activities and dialogues.

INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE (Self Smart)

Children with strong intrapersonal intelligence have a deep awareness of their feelings, ideas and goals. These learners tend to shy away from others. They are strong-willed, confident and opinionated. They learn through books, creative materials, privacy and time. Students with this type of intelligence usually need time alone to process and create.

VERBAL-LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE (Word Smart)

Verbal-linguistic students love words and use them to “think through” and solve problems. These learners have highly developed auditory skills and often think in words. They like reading, playing word games and making up poems or stories. You can help these students learn by encouraging them to say and see words, read books, solve riddles and play rhyming games.

LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE (Math Smart)

Logical-mathematical students enjoy working with numbers. They can easily interpret data and analyze abstract patterns and have a well-developed ability to reason and think in terms of cause and effect. These children are able to see and explore patterns, solve puzzles and ask questions. They like to experiment. They need to learn by investigation and form concepts before they can deal with the details.

NATURALISTIC INTELLIGENCE (Nature Smart)

These children enjoy being in nature and want to preserve and protect the natural world. Students with strong naturalistic intelligence easily recognize and categorize plants, animals and rocks. They enjoy playing in the water or with pets and bugs and generally enjoy the outdoors. These children like to sit near windows and play with natural loose parts. They may learn better outdoors.

EXISTENTIAL INTELLIGENCE (Life Smart)

These children see the big picture and are deep and reflective thinkers. They are often capable of tackling deep existential questions such as “Why are we here?” and “Why do we die?” The best way to teach these children may be by diving into all the reflective thoughts that they throw at us. They love to think about how the world works, so topics such as gravity, weather, the planets and the universe all seem to pique their interest. These children like volunteering to help out in the classroom or support their latest cause. They also enjoy group discussions and discussions with adults.

When we focus on learning styles, we can see why children who have visual-spatial or logical-mathematical intelligence are more drawn to puzzles and may be better at solving them. If you’ve ever observed children who could complete puzzles that were clearly too advanced for their age, it’s likely that these children possessed high levels of visual-spatial and/or logical-mathematical intelligence.

When you learn how your students learn best, this knowledge takes your teaching up a notch and helps your students soar. Could this be the piece of the puzzle that changes how you present a topic to a struggling student?  Give it a try and find out!

 “We are not all the same, we do not all have the same kinds of minds and education works most effectively for most individuals if human differences are taken seriously.”

— Howard Gardner, Harvard University psychologist and neuroscience professor

Whether you grew up with Schoolhouse Rock, Sesame Street, the Electric Company, Romper Room or Raffi, chances are good that you can still sing a counting song that you learned way back then. Ah, there are some really great songs from those days and many a Schoolhouse Rock version is being used to teach “skip counting” in classrooms today.

Music holds a powerful place in our brain—and singing utilizes the brain’s language and music areas. When children are actively listening to music, multiple areas in their brains are lighting up!  Combining music with movement is a powerful tool that we can use daily to reinforce math concepts. The more senses we involve, the more learning takes place. What’s in your body sticks in your brain!

We use songs to work on vocabulary, memory and repetition. This week, the children at our center have begged to sing the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” over and over again. It’s so fun to watch the different levels of coordination, anticipation and expectations as children of different ages and abilities participate in this activity. The beauty of this song is that everybody loves it. Everyone feels successful and happy, regardless of their developmental level. It always seems to be developmentally appropriate because…it’s a song!

Songs can be the easy, fun and social-emotional pillars for the children in our care. When we share counting songs such as “This Old Man” or “Five Green and Speckled Frogs,” we are introducing counting and numbers and math concepts such as removing one from a group. The repetition and rhythm in these songs make it easy for very young children to remember the name and sequence of number patterns. As they learn to anticipate these patterns and sequences of events or objects, children are building early math skills that they will need in the years to come.

We also use songs to tell stories and to ease into transitions or new activities, such as pickup time and naptime. At nap time, each child gets to choose a book that we will read as a group. The songbooks make an appearance weekly. I am quite certain that the children all think that they can “read” “The Wheels on the Bus” or “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed” as they sing the songs along with me. Another daily favorite is “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,” which—ironically—I can remember singing back in kindergarten, accompanied by Mrs. Smith and her piano. 

This is the way we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash our hands…

Using songs in your daily routines can help you meet the math standards for early childhood education. Keep it light, easy and age-appropriate! Sing loud, sing often, sing off-key! The children don’t care. That won’t be what they remember. They will remember the words to the song, which will lay a strong foundation for their future math learning. Perhaps that’s what Schoolhouse Rock had in mind. A strong “rock” foundation! 

Interested in using songs to lay the foundation for later math learning? Take a look at some of my favorite music and movement books:

Inch by Inch: The Garden Song by David Mallett (HarperCollins, 1997)

Five Little Ducks by Raffi (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1999)

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes by Annie Kubler (Childs Play Intl. Ltd., 2002)

Mother Goose’s Action Rhymes by Axel Scheffler (Pan MacMillan, 2017)

Electronic music is not often considered a vehicle for young children to explore music or mathematics for that matter.  At Catherine Cook School, where I am the Director of Education Technology, I oversee our AV Studio which is equipped with a sound proof recording room and separate editing room.  In the editing room we have various controllers and launchpads for our older students to explore mixing electronic music.  We are heavily invested in providing any opportunities we can for our students at all ages to explore creativity in all subject areas.  These devices of course are incredibly too sophisticated for younger children, but we have identified entry points to mixing music for our youngest learners.  A few include:

DJ Mix Kids, an application that invites children to remix instrumental versions of nursery rhymes:

Keezy, an application that allows children to mix recorded music or start from scratch and record and mix their beats and lyrics:

ButtonBass provides users with the ability to turn on cubes which have a certain sound assigned to them.  When combined, having multiple cubes on simultaneously, interesting and fun music is composed.  In order to turn off the cubes, depending on the device being used, simply tap the particular cube or click it with the computer mouse.

Here is a quick video demonstration using the web version:

ButtonBass is available:

Web: www.buttonbass.com, Free

App: Android, Free

Note: This resource is solely instrumental music and sound.

The web version provides access to cubes in a variety of genres including:

• Electro
• Trap
• Electronica
• Reggaeton
• Dubstep
• Hip Hop
• House

Consider the following as a list of possible challenges to use with ButtonBass:

• Create a pattern of cubes turned on/off
• Turn on as many rows of 3 cubes as you can
• Turn on as many corners as you can
• How many cubes can be turned on without any two cubes next to each other both being on?
• Turn on all cubes on one entire side of the cube?
• Turn on any cube that has five of its sides up against another cube.
• Turn on a 4-square

What challenges can you come up with?

This particular exercise gets children thinking about spatial sense, patterns, and geometry in a music composition experience.  When I have used this resources in the past, I often create “dj pairs” so that children can work together to tackle the challenges and appreciate their successes as well as the music they are co-creating.

If children find that a particular combination of cubes turned on is worth revisiting at another time, users can turn on the keys, “SHOW KEYS”.  This will indicate with keys on the keyboard to push to turn on that particular cube.  Taking note of these keys turned on will make it easy to recreate the particular sound again.

The presenters provide a framework for supporting young children’s emerging mathematical understandings  through music and movement in the ECE classroom.  It is detailed and provides many recommendations and ideas for incorporating developmentally appropriate opportunities for early math exploration through music.

Click here to visit the site.  You have to provide a name and email address to view the webinar, but it is well worth it.

Enjoy and let us know what you think.

So why is repetition important?  Many adults like to listen to the same music over and over.  It gets in our heads and into our hearts.  Music reminds of times and experiences- it evokes emotions and memories.  Music is the soundtrack of our lives.  Children begin experiencing this in infancy (many would say they really begin experiencing this in the womb.)  My own children were soothed by familiar music and showed signs of music recognition as early as a few weeks old.

Repetition in listening is one way that we can encourage music appreciation but we can also use repetition as a means of experiencing beats and tempos.  When you clap 3 times and then ask the children to repeat what you did, they follow the number of beats (3) and the speed at which you clapped (tempo).  This activity is great because very, very young children can participate, while you can make this much more complicated for older children.  Older children also like to create the beats and the tempo while others follow them.

In children’s music, you can hear the regular beats of the rhythm.  Take the Barney Song (I Love You).  If you sing this song to yourself, and clap along with the beat you will see that it is a regular, even beat through the first part and then it quickens near the middle and then regulates at the end.

I love you.  (3 beats)

You love me. (3 beats)

We’re a happy family. (7 beats)

With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you. (3 beats quick, 3 beats slow, 6 beats quick)

Won’t you say you love me too? (7 beats)

Next time you sing this with the kids, have them clap on the beat and see if they hear the rhythm.  If you have rhythm sticks, they can also clap their sticks together to the beat of the music.  Try this with several songs and see which ones have clear and steady beats.

Often, the rhythm of the beat occurs as a pattern.  Clapping to the beat will encourage the children to explore the pattern of music to see that the rhythm repeats (pattern)