Caitie is sharing tips for using the preschool song “Pass The Beanbag” in the classroom and at home for lots of fun learning with little ones. She has lots of great ideas! And she’ll lead us through the song using gestures – an excellent way to introduce a song to children. “Pass The Beanbag” is a great circle time song with a built-in game of passing the bean bag around the circle.
Try these ideas in the classroom or at home!
- This is a great song for circle time. Have everyone sit in a circle and simply start passing a bean bag around the circle as the song plays. All the instructions are in the song – just press play and go!
- If you have a large class you can make multiple circles!
- If you make a big circle try passing with multiple beanbags to make sure everybody is engaged. Make sure when you start with multiple bean bags, that they are spread out evenly among your students so they don’t bunch up as you play.
- If you don’t have any bean bags you can use any small item your students can easily pass around the circle, like a ball, sponge or stuffed animal.
- This is a great song to review the vocabulary fast and slow as students pass the bean bag around fast and slowly. At the end of the song we pass the bean bag super fast! Tell your students that fast and slow are opposites. You can review fast and slow and other opposite pairs in our Super Simple versions of Open Shut Them.
- Once your students are familiar with the game, see if they can come up with other ways to pass the bean bag, and then try the opposite. For example, they can pass the bean bag high and low. Or they can stand up and pass the bean bag over and under.
- For some color review, use different colored bean bags every time you play. Before you start to pass the bean bag ask your students what color it is. Or go through a pile of bean bags that are all different colors, identify the color of each one, then pick a color to play with.
- For a fun craft, try making your own homemade bean bag! We make ours with rice and an old, clean sock! This is a simple and fun activity that is great for some fine motor skill practice.
More resources for this song (1)
