Lesson Ideas to Accompany These Hands by David Gunning

As an elementary music teacher, I am responsible for organizing the Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US) service in my schools. And honestly, it is one of my favourite programs to plan and execute.

This year, I tried something new and had my whole school learn a song to sing for the service. When it was time to sing the song in the service, the choir sang on the risers and the remaining students sang from where they were seated. 
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The song I chose is by a Canadian singer-songwriter, David Gunning, entitled These Hands. ​

Take a listen to it here!

Now, if you are reading this in real-time (2024) it is likely too late for you to plan to perform this at your Remembrance Day service, but the message is so good you could perform for almost any occasion. 

However, it is not too late to use this as a listening activity and use these extensions in your classroom 

As I said, all of my students are performing this song, which means I also had to teach it to all of them so here is what I did as an extension for each grade level 

Kindergarten to Grade 2 

• After listening to the song I asked 2 questions I always ask after we listen to music, How did it make you feel? What did it remind you of? 
  
• Then I told the students that the song had a very special message in it. It took some prompting and a few more listens for students to be able to pull out the message
  
• I then lead students in a discussion of different things we do with our hands, remember we’re talking about K-2 students here, so we got answers like color, play hockey, draw, play piano ect  
  
• We listened again and took note of all the things that the song said people did with their hands and talked about how those were helpful and good things for the world 
  
• We then brainstormed ways that we could use our hands for good 
  
• Students then chose something that they were going to do with their hands. They wrote it down on a cutout hand (thank goodness for my Cricut) that I had prepared and drew a picture to match. ​
  

Grade 3-6 Students 

• After listening to the song we talked about how this music is similar/ different to other music they hear. It has an acoustic sound which makes it quite different compared to music most of my students are listening to 
• I then had students complete a listening sheet about the music, which gave me an assessment of the knowledge of music terms 
• You can grab some generic listening sheets here for free!.​

Generic Listening Sheets 

• We then listened again and talked about the meaning of all the ways people use their hands for good in the word
• To tie it into Remembrance Day we also discussed what a privilege it is to be able to use our hands for whatever we liked 
• Then, similar to the younger students we brainstormed ways we use our hands for good and filled them in on a traced cut out of their hand. 
• Rather than draw, I had the students write what they would use their hands fo

​Some tips to consider 

• This makes a beautiful display to have set up in the location of your Remembrance Day Service 
• If you are going to display them for Remembrance Day have the students do a rough copy and a good copy 
• It looks so cool to have all the kids trace their hands, but it is a lot of work. And for students who have smaller hands, it may not give them enough room to write and draw
• Make sure to have various skin tones for students to choose from. Inclusion and diversity are important!  

This song and artwork were so powerful at our service. Even if you don’t use this song for Remembrance Day, Veterans Day or Memorial Day programs I HIGHLY recommend listening to and talking about the song in your music classroom. There is lots of musical value in it with the vocal and acoustic sound, plus it has a great message.

Enjoy! 
Jayna