Volunteering to teach music in your child’s kindergarten class can be a truly wonderful experience! What does it require?
- Love children and beautiful music, and have a big desire to share the music with the children. That counts the very most! It really helps to be able to sing on pitch and feel comfortable singing in front of others, but aside from that, the good news is that you don’t have to be a professional musician to do this! I didn’t graduate in vocal performance. I’m simply a mother who loves music and singing and wanted to share it with my daughter’s class and other children, too.
- Bring your energy and love to your teaching time. Children merit the best we have to give, and they generously reciprocate all the love and energy we put into teaching! Teaching music to children is the best!
- Be committed to teaching 30 minutes in the classroom at least once a week. Once you begin teaching, keep going back. The children and the teacher will want you to be there. It is some of the best time you will ever spend helping children outside of your own home! Do plan for a little time before class to check in at the school office and get any school-stored materials to the class and set up. There will also be a little time needed to return school-stored materials to their place and check out at the office. For me, I plan on around 45-60 minutes per class I teach.
- Plan on more time outside of the classroom to prepare. The amount of preparation time you spend will depend completely on how comfortable you are with teaching and the lesson material. The more you teach it, the less time you have to prepare. Now that I have taught these lessons a number of times each, I simply need to be sure I have the needed materials for a particular lesson, review the lesson, and I’m ready.
- Give feedback. My part in this music teaching endeavor has been to prepare the materials for you to use. Your part is to share your experience using them in order to help others who will teach and learn from it in the future. You can do this by making comments on the different web pages or emailing me directly. Thank you for taking a minute to send me your feedback!