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Post by Alexa Rosenbaum

September means back to school, and we are excited to be back in our classrooms and making music with both familiar and new faces!  The beginning of the school year is a great opportunity to facilitate social interaction and help students learn the names of their peers. Here are my 5 favorite name songs and chants to make learning names fun, silly, and of course musical!

1) Drumming Name Chant

Hey, hey, what do you say? Let’s play a game with our drums and our       names. You’ll say your name as your play your drum, this is how the game is done!

Pass around a drum and each student will play the rhythm of their name while saying it out loud.  To reinforce this, other students could echo the rhythm and name with other instruments or with body percussion. 

Hey, hey, what do you say? We played a game with our drums and our names. We played our names as we played our drums, and that is how the game is done!

2) The Name Game

This is a song originally sung by Shirley Ellis back in the 1960s, but is a tune that a lot of kids already know.  It allows students to repeat a name several times and lets them be silly and creative at the same time!

3) Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?

Leader: Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?

Group: (name) took the cookie from the cookie jar!

Student whose name is called: Who me?

Group: Yes you!

Student: Couldn’t be!

Group: Then who?

Either the student whose name was chosen can pick the next person or the leader can choose each time.  There are several variations on this chant, but here is one cute example.

4) Time to Say Hello {Tune: Where is Thumbkin?}

Where is (name)? Where is (name)?

Peekaboo! Peekaboo!

It’s time to say hello, it’s time to say hello.

Hello to you, hello to you.

Since this is a call and response song it is easy for kids to pick up and sing along.  I find that this one works particularly well with really little ones and the peekaboo can be done using their hands or a scarf.

5) I Wanna Say Hi {Tune: The Banana Boat Song}

(name) I said (name)! (name) is here and I wanna say hi.

Repeat this with all the students and if possible have them choose a peer and sing out their name!