Preschool Music Curriculum Scope & Sequence
What kids can actually learn (not just songs!)
If you’re a preschool director, childcare center owner, or early childhood teacher looking for a preschool music curriculum, you may be wondering:
What exactly should preschoolers be learning in music?
Is a music curriculum simply a collection of songs?
Should children—can they—learn music vocabulary?
How much rhythm should a 2-year-old actually be expected to understand?
What about pitch, tempo, dynamics, instruments, and steady beat?
And perhaps most importantly: How do you know whether you’re providing meaningful music education rather than simply filling 20 minutes with songs and movement?
These are valuable questions, for sure!
A high-quality early childhood curriculum should have meaningful goals, a logical sequence for learning, opportunities to revisit and deepen concepts, and enough flexibility to meet children where they are developmentally. That’s true for music just as it is for any other area of learning.
That’s why at Little Kiddos Music Academy®, we don’t think of our preschool music curriculum as a collection of cute songs. (Although, they definitely are cute!)
Little Kiddos Music is a progressive music-learning experience for young children ages 1–6.
It’s not just filler, seasonal songs at a quick circletime. It’s not just putting on an up-tempo song and having preschoolers play percussion instruments along. Maybe even showing a quick YouTube video for a movement break. Nope! And it breaks my heart when this is the “music time” or “music class” offering at an early childhood learning center.
Because preschool music can—and should—be so much more.
Our lessons are playful, active, repetitive, and developmentally appropriate, but they’re also intentionally designed to help children build actual musical skills.
So What Are Preschoolers Actually Learning in Music?
At first glance, a Little Kiddos Music class might look like children singing, dancing, playing instruments, listening to stories, and having fun.
And they are!
But underneath that playful experience, we’re intentionally building real musical understanding.
Throughout this preschool music curriculum, children repeatedly encounter concepts such as:
- Steady beat
- Rhythm
- Tempo
- Dynamics
- Pitch
- Melody
- Musical patterns
- Listening
- Musical form
- Instrument skills
- Singing
- Movement
- Musical vocabulary
- Creative music-making
- Group music-making
That’s a list to be exceptionally proud of!
The goal isn’t for a 3-year-old to sit still and memorize definitions.
The goal is for children to experience music so often and in so many different ways that musical concepts begin to make sense. It’s play-based. Evidence-based. Developmentally appropriate. So, it works, and it’s tons of fun!
That’s what a preschool music curriculum should be.
The Little Kiddos Music Academy® Scope & Sequence
Our curriculum is built around several interconnected musical learning strands.
Children don’t necessarily move through these concepts in a perfectly straight line. Young children learn through repetition, exploration, and revisiting familiar ideas.
Instead, we continually return to important musical concepts while gradually increasing the ways children can experience, imitate, recognize, practice, perform, and eventually create. That’s it summed up in one beautiful line:
The Little Kiddos Approach: Experience → Imitate → Respond → Practice → Perform → Create
But, for an in-depth look at the scope of this preschool music curriculum, read on!
STEADY BEAT
Steady beat is the foundation for all music. I like to explain it as the bowl that holds together the ingredients that bake our music cake! Not only is the foundation upon which music is built, it’s also one of the very first components of early music learning.
Children (even as infants!) first experience beat with their bodies. They might:
- Bounce
- Pat their legs
- Clap
- March
- Tap
- Move scarves
- Play a drum
- Shake an instrument
As children develop, they begin to maintain the beat for longer periods, transfer it from their bodies to instruments, and keep the beat while other musical elements change.
Eventually, children can maintain a steady beat more independently while singing, moving, listening, or playing with a group.
Why does this matter?
Because before children can intentionally perform rhythms, they need an internal sense of the beat underneath those rhythms.
In other words: Beat is the musical pulse. Rhythm is what happens on that pulse.
And that’s an important distinction in a real preschool music curriculum. It shouldn’t just be arbitrarily banging on instruments…it all builds to a purpose.
RHYTHM
The Little Kiddos Music defition of, Fancy Pants Music Word, RHYTHM is: Patterns of sound on a steady beat. It’s one of the ingredients that gets added into our Steady Beat bowl for baking our Music Cake!
Playing rhythms, is playing music. And rhythms are everywhere in a preschool classroom!
It’s found in:
- Children’s names
- Nursery rhymes
- Chants
- Songs
- Spoken words
- Clapping patterns
- Instrument patterns
Children might first echo a simple pattern. Then they could tap a pattern on rhythm sticks.
Later, they can combine simple patterns, read visual rhythm cards, or even create their own.
Our Rockin’ Rhythms activities take children from experiencing and performing rhythms toward creating and performing their own rhythmic patterns.
That’s an important progression: LISTEN → ECHO → PERFORM → CREATE
TEMPO
Children naturally notice when music is moving quickly or slowly.
In a preschool music curriculum, we can take that natural experience and give children the musical language to describe it.
It’s the musical vocabulary combined with movement that allows tempo to really shine!
FAST → becomes PRESTO! SLOW → becomes LARGO
When we talk about Fancy Pants Music Word, TEMPO: (Patterns of sound on a steady beat), we can also use our magic music-wand/music magic-wand and say ACCELERANDO which speeds up the tempo.
We might change the way we march, dance, play an instrument, or move a scarf depending on the tempo.
Children aren’t simply memorizing the word tempo. They’re experiencing what tempo means and creating it with their own bodies. They are making it happen.
And that is a developmentally appropriate way (and powerful and fun way!) to introduce music vocabulary.
DYNAMICS
Music can be loud. Music can be soft, quiet. And children love discovering the difference!
But, you know, in Little Kiddos Music, we never water down the words! Instead of stopping at “loud” and “quiet,” we introduce children to the musical terms of dynamics. Even more Fancy Pants Music Words!
LOUD → becomes FORTE! VERY, VERY QUIET → becomes PIANISSIMO.
They might:
- Play a drum loudly and softly
- Change their movement
- Sing with different levels of intensity
- Listen to changes in a song
- Respond to a teacher’s musical cue
As children develop, they’re able to control their own playing and begin using dynamics intentionally.
That’s music creation and not just noise makin’! (And don’t we all appreciate the difference?!)
PITCH & MELODY
Another important part of a preschool music curriculum is pitch.
Fancy Pants Music Word, PITCH: (Where does the note go? High, low, or anywhere in-the-middle).
Young children can explore pitch through:
- Singing
- Echo games
- Movement
- Vocal play
- Call-and-response
- Listening activities
Fancy Pants Music Word, MELODY: (Melody is what we sing. We sing pitches, to create the melody…or song…or tune.)
Pitch and melody are two of the ingredients in our Music Cake that just make it so extra tasty!
A young child might begin by exploring very high and very low sounds. Over time, children can begin matching simple sung pitches, echoing melodic phrases, recognizing high and low sounds, and noticing whether a melody moves up or down.
Providing a lot of opportunity to hear, imitate, and play with pitch which is one of the ways that musical understanding grows.
SINGING & VOCAL DEVELOPMENT
Of course, singing is at the heart of a preschool music program. But singing is much more than memorizing lyrics!
Through singing children practice:
- Listening
- Imitation
- Pitch matching
- Memory
- Vocabulary
- Articulation
- Musical phrasing
- Group participation
- Community building
- Expressive communication
Call-and-response is especially useful because children get an opportunity to listen first and then respond.
And there’s no requirement for every child to sing every time. They’re taking it all in.
Some jump right in. Some watch. Some move. Some whisper. Some need time.
All of those can be perfectly valid ways to participate in a developmentally appropriate music experience.
MOVEMENT
At Little Kiddos Music Academy®, movement isn’t a break from the music lesson.
Movement is a part of the music lesson. Children can demonstrate what they’re hearing through their bodies.
They can:
- March to a steady beat
- Move faster or slower with tempo
- Freeze and start with musical cues
- Move high and low with pitch changes
- Show loud and soft movements (aligning with dynamics)
- Create their own movement with self-expression
- Use scarves to visually represent musical ideas
- Explore body percussion
Movement is especially important for young children, because preschoolers aren’t meant to learn music by sitting still for an entire lesson. Experiencing concepts through the body-connection is incredibly beneficial in locking it in their minds!
INSTRUMENT EXPLORATION & PLAYING
Getting those little hands on instruments to allow experimentation, expression, sensory experience, play—is so important!
Preschool music should involve real music-making. Children need opportunities to actually play!
Our classes include instruments such as: EGG SHAKERS, DRUMS, WRIST BELLS, RHYTHM STICKS, XYLOPHONES, and more.
Children begin by exploring how instruments sound and how they can be played.
Then they learn to: Start and stop. Play a steady beat. Follow a musical cue. Control their volume. Echo a rhythm. Play together.
And eventually: Make musical choices.
That’s a progression from exploration to control to musical independence.
LISTENING
Good musicians are good listeners. So listening is an important part of our preschool music curriculum!
Children learn to listen for elements of music! (The ingredients that come together to bake our Music Cake!)
- A steady beat
- Changes in tempo
- Changes in dynamics
- Changes in high/low sounds (pitch)
- Repeated patterns (in rhythm or melody)
- Musical cues
- Different instruments
- Changes between sections
Children can show their understanding in so many different ways! They may demonstrate what they hear by answering a question, moving or playing an instrument. Sometimes they just watch and observe, soaking it in.
Even if it looks different, it is active listening and participation.
MUSICAL VOCABULARY
This is one of the (many) music-in-early-childhood hills upon which I may die. I am beyond passionate and commited to teaching the youngest learners the language of music.
Introducing music vocabulary, our Fancy Pants Music Words, is definitely one of the pillars upon which Little Kiddos Music is built.
Do preschoolers need to memorize a dictionary of music terms? Absolutely not!
But should we underestimate their ability to learn the language of music? Definitely not!
When children hear and use real musical vocabulary repeatedly, those words become meaningful because they are connected to experiences. And that’s magical!
MUSICAL PATTERNS & FORM
Patterns are a huge part of music. Children experience them through:
- Repeated rhythms
- Repeated lyrics
- Repeated melodic phrases
- Verses and refrains
- Movement sequences
- Call-and-response
- Instrument patterns
- Predictable musical routines
Over time, children begin to anticipate what comes next.
They begin recognizing repetition. They begin noticing changes. And eventually, they can create patterns of their own.
This is one reason repetition is so important in early childhood music.
Repeating a musical experience isn’t “doing the same thing again.”
For a young child, repetition is an opportunity to notice something they weren’t ready to notice the first time.
ENSEMBLE & SOCIAL MUSIC-MAKING
There’s something so incredibly special and unique about making music together. It can bond and connect people in a way that few other activities can.
For children, it especially helps them learn to:
- Listen to other people
- Start and stop together
- Take turns
- Follow a leader
- Control their instrument
- Match a group beat
- Respond to others
- Participate as part of an ensemble
The NAEYC describes making music and singing together as “powerful ways to connect to others and share cultural knowledge and practices.” So. Very. True.
CREATIVE MUSIC-MAKING
A strong preschool music curriculum shouldn’t only ask children to copy the teacher. Children also need opportunities to create their own!
That might look like:
- Making up a rhythm
- Creating a movement
- Choosing how to play an instrument
- Responding to music in their own way
This is what moves kiddos from, “I can copy that,” to “I can create something all by myself.” Such a powerful transition to self-expression and self-empowerment.
How Does this Preschool Music Curriculum Change From Ages 1–6?
I strongly believe in the beauty that come from mixed age-group learning. I’ve seen the benefits for years. The younger toddlers watch, learn and mimic the older preschoolers. The preK kids feel the confidence boost of being a leader.
Little Kiddos Music is designed to grow with learners. There are benefits for every age. Of course, the difference in development, does mean that age groups will learn and respond to the preschool music lessons in amazing and unique ways.
But to be clear: A 1-year-old and a 5-year-old can experience the same musical concept in completely different ways.
That’s why our curriculum is intentionally layered. There’s something for every phase of early childhood.
Ages 1–2: Experience & Explore
It is incredible to watch the growth (and suprising ability!) within this age range.
Young toddlers may:
- Respond to a steady beat
- Move with music
- Explore instruments
- Imitate sounds and movements
- Participate in repetitive songs
- Experience high/low and loud/soft contrasts
- Respond to simple musical cues
Ages 3–4: Participate & Develop
This is the age when you start to really see more independence and self-expression. SO much fun!
Children 3-4, increasingly:
- Maintain a steady beat
- Echo simple rhythms
- Respond to tempo and dynamics
- Echo pitch patterns
- Sing familiar songs
- Play instruments with more control
- Recognize patterns
- Use musical vocabulary
- Follow musical directions
Ages 5–6: Perform & Create
Ahh, those eldest preschoolers, the preKinders, the Kindergarteners, the on-the-cusp of elementary schoolers…they really can do so much musically!
Children increasingly:
- Maintain a steady beat independently
- Perform simple rhythms
- Create rhythmic patterns
- Demonstrate pitch understanding
- Echo melodic phrases
- Recognize musical form
- Use authentic music vocabulary
- Make musical choices
- Create movement and rhythms
- Participate confidently in group music-making
Now, of course, these are by no means, absolutes. These aren’t rigid age requirements. These abilities aren’t set in stone and can vary with as much individuality as every single child can!
But, they’re examples of how musical learning can deepen as children grow.
Developmentally appropriate practice means giving children meaningful goals while allowing room for individual differences, interests, experiences, and developmental timelines.
The Little Kiddos Music Academy® approach: Experience → Imitate → Respond → Practice → Perform → Create
So, there it is. In a very large, detailed, layered musical cake. The ingredients that come together to add such rich flavor to this preschool music curriculum!
Children first experience a musical idea. Then they imitate it. Then they learn to respond to it. With repetition and practice, they become more confident performing it.
And eventually, they can use that knowledge to create something of their own.
That’s what we’re building.
Not little performers who memorize a bunch of songs. Little musicians who are beginning to understand how music truly works.
They sing. Move. Listen. Play. Respond. Create. And most importantly…learn real music.
What Makes a Good Preschool Music Curriculum?
If you’re a preschool director, childcare center owner, or teacher evaluating a music curriculum, I recommend looking beyond the number of songs or videos included. You might consider asking:
Does the curriculum have a clear scope and sequence?
You should be able to identify what musical skills children are building—not just what songs they’ll sing.
Does it revisit important concepts?
Young children need repetition and opportunities to deepen their understanding.
Does it include actual music-making?
Children should have opportunities to sing, move, listen, and play instruments.
Does it teach musical vocabulary?
Children can learn real music words when they’re introduced in meaningful, age-appropriate ways.
Does it allow for different developmental levels?
A 2-year-old and a 5-year-old shouldn’t necessarily be expected to demonstrate a musical concept in exactly the same way.
Does it make music accessible to teachers?
A great curriculum shouldn’t require every preschool teacher to have a degree in music.
And finally: Is the music actually enjoyable?
Because we’re talking about preschoolers!
Music should be educational AND joyful.
Music Isn’t Just Something to “Fit In” During the Day
Music deserves a real place in early childhood education.
NAEYC’s current guidance emphasizes that music and singing can nurture creative expression, relationships, communication, and learning, and that educators can incorporate singing, chanting, and instrumental activities throughout the learning day.
But meaningful music education doesn’t have to mean complicated lessons or a teacher with years of formal music training.
Little Kiddos Music Academy® was created to make it easier for preschool and childcare programs to provide real music learning without needing to hire a music specialist or expect classroom teachers to become music teachers.
Our lessons are playful, evidence-based, low-stimulation, and intentionally designed for young children.
We use songs children love—but it doesn’t stop there.
As you’ve seen, Little Kiddos Music builds musical skills through repetition, movement, singing, instruments, listening, call-and-response, storytelling, rhythm practice, and real music vocabulary.
Because preschool music can be fun and educational. It can and should have a clear Scope and Sequence!
It can be simple for teachers and intentional.
It can be playful and teach real musical concepts.
And your teachers don’t need a music background to make it happen.
That’s what a real preschool music curriculum should do.
Little Kiddos Music Academy® gives teachers and directors a research-informed, developmentally appropriate music program built by someone who’s spent 25+ years in the actual classroom! If you’re evaluating curriculum for your center, REACH OUT. We’re happy to provide the right curriculum for your setting and free samples of all options.
Jenny Martin, M.Ed. is the founder of Little Kiddos Music Academy® and has been developing early childhood music curriculum for over 25 years. Her preschool music curriculum – video classes and lesson plans are used in preschools, childcare centers, and early learning programs across the country.
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