Elementary Christmas Program Ideas

Most elementary music teachers are required to prepare and present performances.  Performances are good.  Sometimes I have to tell myself that 50 times a day in December, but deep down I believe it.  I would like to share some things that have worked for me and give you a few resources to use.

First, here’s my school situation.  I work in a small, rural school district.  There is one elementary building and one junior/senior high building.  I do everything musical at the grade school and another gal does everything musical at the junior/senior high school.

Here are a few things to know about my position:

• My school district does not have an auditorium.
• My grade school does not have enough chairs to seat the audience that attends the elementary Christmas program.
• The Christmas program has traditionally been at night.
• I prepare two separate programs-Preschool/Kindergarten and 1st-6th Grade
• All the kids in each program sit in the bleachers in the high school gym.  They all sing together. (That’s about 200 1st-5th graders singing all at once and 90 preschool/kindergartners!)
• Pros to many grades singing the same song-awesome sound to fill a gymnasium, all the performers are performing the whole time
• Cons to many grades singing the same song-1st graders have to learn the same amount of lyrics as 5th graders, finding songs that a wide range of ages will enjoy, I have to sing the same group of songs a bajillion times!!!!!
• Most of the songs are 2-part, but I have all the kids sing the melody in unison.

This page is dedicated to sharing what I have done in the past for Christmas programs.  My hope is to give you some great ideas and resources that you can  use in your school.

Christmas at the Movies (1st-5th)

This program was super fun!  The kids thoroughly enjoyed learning the songs.  The program was centered around songs from movies about Christmas or Winter.  I have a short script that 6th grade volunteers read to introduce the songs.  Here’s a pdf of the script:

Christmas At The Movies Script

That PDF includes a short introduction for each of the songs explaining the movie each comes from and what that movie is about.  It also includes the title and arranger for each piece the students sang.

The songs used in this program are:

• Jolly Jingle Christmas Medley Arr. by Alan Billinglsey
• The Polar Express (The Polar Express, Hot Chocolate, Believe, Spirit of the Season) Arr. by Audrey Snyder
• You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch Arr. by Jeff Funk
• Where Are You Christmas? Arr. by Mac Huff
• Nightmare Before Christmas (This Is Halloween, What’s This?, Kidnap the Sandy Claws, Oogie Boogie’s Song)  Arr. by Alan Bilinglsey
• Somewhere In My Memory Arr. by Mark Hayes
• Frozen (Choral Highlights) (Frozen Heart, For the First Time in Forever, Love Is An Open Door, In Summer, Fixer Upper, Let It Go)  Arr. by Mark Brymer

Here is a fantastic picture a friend of mine took while waiting for the performance to begin.  There is so much chaos happening the 10 minutes before the program starts and this picture captures it perfectly!

The last song was a 9 1/2 minute medley of Frozen songs.  Yes, I sang/listened to Let It Go over 100 times in the months of November and December.  And I bought an Elsa costume to surprise the kids.

The superintendent drummed up some Christmas trivia questions to fill time while I changed into this beauty.  There were even some preschool audience members that were talking for days about how Elsa came to the concert!

To top it all off, the teachers wanted to do a flash mob at the concert.  I did some looking and found a Zumba routine to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.  The teachers practiced in my classroom before and after school for 3 weeks.  It was a lot of fun and the kids loved it!

Chilly Milly (Preschool/Kindergarten)

This is a musical I did with the preschool/kindergarten group.  I really enjoyed it.  It’s a very simple story about building a snowman and then the snowman melts.  Here’s a link to the score: Chilly Milly.  The songs are repetitive and simple; perfect for this age group.

Instead of stressing over kindergartners memorizing lines, I the narrate the program.  The kids act out what I say and sing the songs that go with the story.

I created a snowman out of felt to have a visual representation of what was going on in the story.  I used the felt snowman for both practices during music class and at the performance.

The Gingerbread Man (Preschool/Kindergarten)

This is a very familiar story the kids have fun sharing.  I found a musical version of it on a preschool/kindergarten music resources website: Heidi Songs The Gingerbread Man.

This 15 minute musical has songs that  are repetitive and short with minimal lyrics….perfect for preschool and kindergarten.  I don’t usually have the kids act out the story or read lines during the program.  I pre-record myself reading the story and then have the kids sing the songs.

Here is a video of the entire musical from the Heidi Songs website:

The Littlest Christmas Tree (Preschool/Kindergarten)

This adorable musical is a showstopper for those younger ones.  It tells the story of the trees in the forest waiting for Santa to come and pick one of them to be his personal Christmas tree.  All the trees make fun of the smallest one, who ends up being picked because he is the only tree who knows the true meaning of Christmas.  There is an adorable solo opportunity if your up to the challenge of getting a kindergartner to memorize a song and sing it in front of an audience.

The teachers helped me out by making green, body-sized triangles that the kids decorated and hung around their necks to look like trees.

You can purchase the musical here.

Here is a video of the musical I found on YouTube: