The role of music and songs for improving listening skills of A1 level learners on the material of Kid`s English 1

Before they listen
It is a good idea to warm up for a song by providing some input. You could do this by using visuals of the main vocabulary items, or using realia. For “Old MacDonald had a farm” for example you can practie animal vocabulary with flashcards or small toy animals. For ‘The Goldilocks song’ you could provide some household items, e.g. three bowls and cutlery. Each song on Learn English Kids also has a 'preparation' activity, matching images with some of the key words in the song, both online and on the worksheet. Children could predict or guess words from a song, for example predict the time in “What`s the time”. They could try to guess the missing words in a gapped song.
They could try to put the jumbled lines of a song in order.
They can circle or tick pictures of what is included in the song.
They could be asked to order or sequence pictures or words as they listen.
They could complete the gaps.
They could sort out jumbled lyrics.
They could be asked to match half-lines.
The teacher could give true/false statements.
While listening
When you introduce the song allow the learners to watch and listen to the song a couple of times to become familiar with the tune. Ask children to point to any visuals or items of realia as they listen. Children usually start to sing along naturally without much prompting from the teacher. Performing actions to accompany the song is a good way to encourage this. The song “Five little monkeys” is a fun action song to get children used to joining in this way. For most other songs, actions can be invented for almost any word or line – ask learners to help you invent the actions!
After listening
Many of the songs on the website have a topic or theme and therefore act as a natural stimulus for subsequent reading and writing activities, such as changing the words or adding verses. For example, the “Old MacDonald had a farm”, lyrics could be adapted to “Old MacDonald had a zoo”. Many of the songs have worksheets which support children with this, such as ‘What can it be?’
Many of the songs also lend themselves to creative arts and crafts activities. For example, with “Old MacDonald had a farm” you could make a classroom wall display of farmyard animals.