Holidays and Celebrations: English Songs for Primary School Students
On any day, singing English songs in class makes learning the language more fun and engaging for primary school students. Holidays, festivities, traditions, and other celebrations offer excellent opportunities to incorporate English songs into primary school lesson plans.
Songs are great for teaching and learning the English language (or any language for that matter) for several reasons. For one, songs can be useful devices for memorizing English vocabulary and phrases and putting them into contexts. Songs accompanied by videos doubly engage students, especially the young ones, with visual elements to complement the audio elements.
And everyone learns differently! So I find it to be a great teaching strategy to incorporate different types of teaching methods (i.e. verbal, written, movement, etc.) to ensure that all students have the best possible chance to understand the material.
Besides all of those reasons for using English songs in a primary school classroom, singing songs is just simply fun! Singing English songs is especially fun with young English language learners, who—at least in my experience—tend to view songs in class as a special treat.
In this post, you’ll find my favorite English songs for teaching about the holidays to elementary school students. Tons and tons more great English songs exist on YouTube and elsewhere on the internet, but in my opinion, these were the best English songs I found for teaching about the holidays to primary school students.
I compiled these songs to teach English to first, second, and third grade students in a bilingual primary school in Spain. So please keep in mind that some songs in this list are geared towards slightly younger students and some are geared towards slightly older students, but they all are intended for use with students around age five to age nine.
I’ve organized the holiday-related English songs below by celebration, and I’ve listed the celebrations alphabetically. In this list, you’ll find English songs for Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day.
Christmas
Gingerbread Cookie Dance - A super fun song and dance to teach students how to make a gingerbread house in English.
Let’s Decorate Our Christmas Tree - A short cartoon song about decorating Christmas trees, great for teaching Christmas vocabulary in English.
We Wish You a Merry Christmas - A classic Christmas carol, great for teaching students about Christmas caroling.
Easter
Easter Song for Kids - This song may help you teach basic Easter vocabulary in English. It also describes some Easter traditions in English.
This is the Way the Bunny Hops - Here’s a simple English song that’s great for teaching about Easter to primary school English language learners.
The Easter Bunny Dance for Kids - This English dance is a fun way to get your primary school students engaged and moving on Easter.
The Easter Bunny Dance - Freeze Dance - This English dance is a bit longer, but it’s a great English listening activity, because students must listen to the instructions to learn the movements. Then there’s a fun freeze dance part at the end!
The Bunny Hokey Pokey - This one is probably self-explanatory, but it’s the hokey pokey modified to use a rabbit’s parts of the body! This English song is great if your students are learning about animals and their body parts.
Halloween
The Skeleton Dance - A silly parts of the body English song and dance, great for Halloween, too.
This is the Way We Carve a Pumpkin - A short song about jack-o-lantern carving that includes parts of the face.
Thanksgiving
They Were the Pilgrims - A song to help engage students with the story of the first Thanksgiving in English.
The Turkey Pokey - It’s the Hokey Pokey, but you and the students can pretend to be turkeys!
Gobble Gobble - A cute dance about turkeys and Thanksgiving dinner.
Valentine’s Day
5 Little Hearts - The Kiboomers Preschool Songs & Nursery Rhymes for Valentine’s Day - A short song to teach a few key English phrases for Valentine’s Day.
L-O-V-E Love! Danny Go! Valentine’s Day Songs - A Valentine’s Day song about love.
Valentine’s Day Song for Kids - Would You Be My Valentine? - A song with a cute cartoon about asking someone to “be my Valentine.”
Valentine’s Day Exercise Dance - A Valentine’s Day dance with a great introduction with lots of English Valentine’s Day vocabulary. A great English song for primary school students.
Want to see more of my favorite English songs for teaching primary school students? Click the button below!
