One Song. So Many Lessons: Why I Love Teaching with “Lemonade”

Folk songs are a cornerstone of my elementary music lessons. They're simple, catchy, and easy to sing—plus, they’re packed with cultural and historical value. But what turns a good folk song into a great one?
For me, it’s all about versatility. The best folk songs can be used in multiple ways and easily extended into different learning activities.
One of my all-time favourites is “Lemonade.” I use this playful and engaging song with my Grade 1 and 2 students to:

• Teach sol and mi
• Practice solo singing
• Review quarter notes and eighth notes
• Playing instruments 
• Inspire creative movement
• Introduce basic composition

If you're looking for a go-to song that checks all the boxes, Lemonade might just become your new favourite too. Grab my lesson pack to make planning easier and teaching even more joyful

Buy Lemonade Lesson Pack

Teaching Sol and Mi 
The primary reason that I started using Lemonade in my elementary music classroom was to teach and name sol and mi pitches. I like lemonade specifically for this because it has a predictable sol and mi pattern. 
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The song is also designed as a call-and-response song. So, students get to hear the sol and mi pattern sung prior to singing it themselves. 

When I teach sol and mi, I use movements to help the students kinesthetically feel that sol is higher than mi. When we sing sol pitches, we tap on our shoulders; when we sing mi pitches, we tap on our laps. 

Along with using movements, I use hearts and colour them with the different boomwhacker colours for that pitch on that beat. After we have explored our bodies, I eventually tell the students that we can describe the changes in music using fancy words- sol and mi. In this song, the higher sounds are sol and the lower sounds are mi. 

In the lesson pack, there are slides to help you reinforce, such as colouring the words to show the different pitches, putting the notes on the staff, and dragging the hand signs over the words. However, because this is the first time my students are learning about sol and mi, I prefer to spend more time on echo singing sol and mi patterns rather than reading them.​

Solo Singing
I mentioned earlier that I like this song to teach sol and mi because it is a call-and-response song that pairs well with having students solo-sing. 

Prior to getting into the deep teaching of sol and mi. I ask the students what they think this song is about. They often conclude that it is about someone trying to sell lemonade. After we have sung the song many times in various arrangements (teacher/students, students/teacher, boys/girls, grade 1s/grade 2s), I will ask for student volunteers to be the lemonade sellers. This means that they sing the green words by themselves. 
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Students are often very eager to “sell lemonade,” and when they sing by themselves, it gives me a good baseline assessment of their ability to sing sol and mi patterns in tune. 

Reviewing Rhythm 
Another great benefit of lemonade is that it uses only quarter- and eighth-note rhythms, but in an atypical pattern, requiring students to listen and think about how many sounds are in each beat. 

I like using iconic notation to teach rhythm. By the time we are learning lemonade, students often realize that 2 of something, in this case lemon slices, means titi, while one of the icons means ta.  However, after just teaching sol and mi, it is not uncommon for my students to mix them up, which is another reason I like to teach both in one song. 

We will read through the standard notation on this song, and the patterns will go with it. I will also use the printables to have the students review and compose with barred eighth notes and quarter notes.

Playing Instruments 
When teaching folk songs, I really like to have the students isolate musical elements by playing them on instruments. 

For lemonade, I will have my kids play the beat alternating back and forth on the sol and mi boomwhackers or bells. You could also use xylophones, but I have had more success having students play a singing note. 

To isolate the rhythms, you could choose any two percussion instruments. Assign the quarter notes to one instrument and the eighth notes to another. This not only gives your students extra practice singing the song, but also creates extra opportunities for instrument playing, which my students love.​

Career Extension
I mentioned earlier that the song is about someone's trade- selling lemonade. In class, we talk about what trade is, what other trades we can think of, and what trade the students want to be when they grow up. 

Then we play the game. While there are a few variations on this game, the version that my students and I play is Career Charades. I show the students a picture of a career and they act it out for the other students to guess. You could split into teams or just play for fun; either way, the students are demonstrating creativity and movement! 

This is also a great game for times when they’ve been sitting or cooped up during indoor recess! 

After we are all charaded out, we turn to composition and finding rhythm in different jobs. I will have the students come up with their own jobs, and we will figure out the rhythm, and I will use some preselected careers that I have included in the Lemonade Lesson pack. 

We wrap up our lemonade unit by having the students create their own career composition. I like using this Careers Composition pack in my TPT store, but you could use the careers cards in the Lemonade Lesson Pack or have your students make their own! ​

Folk songs like “Lemonade” are so much more than just catchy tunes—they're a goldmine of teaching opportunities. From introducing sol and mi to reinforcing rhythms, encouraging solo singing, sparking creativity through movement and composition, and even connecting to real-world careers, this little song does it all. It’s the kind of resource that keeps lessons fresh, engaging, and educational across multiple concepts and classes. If you’re looking to add a flexible, engaging, and effective song to your primary music toolkit, Lemonade might just be the perfect pick!

Ready to dive in? Grab the Lemonade Lesson Pack and bring this folk song to life in your classroom!