Books to Use in the First Month of Teaching Music

I love adding books to my music lessons, sometimes that have a music connection and are simply meant to enhance my lessons. Personally, I don’t think we can read to students enough, so I cherish any chance to read stories to them. 
Back-to-school time is a great opportunity to read books to students, your lessons might be a little slower paced and reading together is a great way to build connections. 
So, here are my favourite books for the back-to-school season!  ​

​All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold This is my all-time favourite book to use at the beginning of the school year. So much so that I read it 15 times so that all my classes heard it. Because I was doing it will all my classes I developed some extension activities to go with it. 

• Ostinato: The book has a recurring line of “All are welcome here” as a response to that I have my students chant “Welcome, welcome, everyone is welcome. ” With my older students, I will extend that activity further and have them play the rhythm to the ostinato on drums or Orff instruments 
• Welcoming Worksheets: These are quick worksheets where students can share information about themselves and ways that we can make people feel welcome. We will brainstorm as a class, and then students will complete their worksheets. 
• Whole School Bulletin Board: This was my favourite extension because everyone from Kindergarten to grade 6 is included. I had students write their names on a quarter note and then I added it to the bulletin board. It was colorful and great decor for my classroom. 

I love this book so much I made a FREE lesson pack to share with you, so that you can share this fantastic book with your students.  

Grab you copy of the lesson pack here!

Music Class Today by David Weinstone  

• I use this book with my students in Kindergarten. It talks about different activities that happen in music class. It has a repetitive line that students can join in with. After reading the story we will talk all about what we will do in music class this year. 

Music Teacher from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler 

• I like using this book with students who I have had for a year or two, because they will see the humor in it when they have some musical background.  It also is a longer book, so it is better for those older kids who have a longer attention span.
  

Ways to Welcome by Linda Ashman 

• This book rhymes and my students LOVE to try to guess the rhyme, which is a great review, especially for those students in grade 1. After ready we will talk about how we welcome one another. I also like to pair it a welcome song for a different culture or in a different language. 

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Lucille Colandro 

• This one might seem odd to do at the beginning of the year but it is great to get students playing instruments early in their year. The animals that the Old Lady Swallowed are assigned an instrument. Since this is the first book I added instruments to, I assign the instruments rather than collaborating with students. When you’re picking make sure you choose something for the beginning that you won’t mind hearing multiple times. For instance, pairing “fly” with cymbals might be a little much by the end of the book. There are many of these books, so I like to introduce them early so we can read many of the books throughout the year! 

The More We Get Together by Celeste Cortright 

• This is another book that I like to use with my younger students. I use the Barefoot Book version as it also has a great projectable video to go with it.

The More We Get Together Barefoot Books

After reading this book with student I like turn the tune into a welcome song. 
    Welcome to music, to music, to music 
    Welcome to music, it is music time
    With Raeya and Ember and Jayna and Mitchell 
   Welcome to music, it is music time    
Then I repeat the last two lines to say each student's name. 

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt 

• I bet you weren’t expecting to see this on a list of books for music teachers, but here is how I use it. After reading the book we talk about how it sucked to have the crayons quit and what things made them quit. Then we talk about what would happen if the instrument in the music room quit. What would be their reasons for quitting? What would we do if we didn’t have instruments to play? And, what can we do to make sure our instruments don’t quit? It is a great way to reinforce that playing instruments is a privilege and that we need to take care of them. While this is a great book to use at the beginning of the year it is also good to bring back if you notice students are not using instruments appropriately. I generally use the book with grade 1-3 students. 

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