As you probably all know, I am a big fan of Super Simple Songs and I love to use their songs in my classes. But I think my love for them is surpassed by Maple Leaf Learning who are my absolute favorites. As their YouTube channel says, “With a big scoop of fun and a sprinkle of silly, we make learning incredibly fun” and that is exactly what they do. Their songs, without exception, are fun, catchy and easy to sing. And as they are experienced EFL teachers, the songs are practical and incredibly useful for teaching English.
It was very hard to choose 10 songs as I love all of them. But these are the songs I love and use the most. They are catchy and smart. You’ll find yourselves singing these when you least expect it, as will your students too. So here it is, my Top 10 Maple Leaf Learning songs and how I use them in class.
The Animal Song by Maple Leaf Learning
This song makes me so happy. I can think of nothing that I love more about this job than watching a class of little kids jumping like kangaroos and counting on their fingers as they sing along to it. It is the perfect song for teaching animal actions and you can adapt the words to any kind of animal that you want to learn about. I like to play a game where I do the action and then let the children fill in the animal at the end of the phrase. E.g. Jump, jump, like a ….. It is also a brilliant song to sing at end of term shows or if you have parents watching as it is so easy to learn and join in with. One of my absolute favorite songs for teaching small children.
Where Are You From? by Maple Leaf Learning
A really simple but catchy song that you will find yourself still singing days after you’ve used it in class. This is a really good song for teaching about different countries and where people come from. I mainly use it with slightly older classes and they all love it. We’ve used this in a class about the Olympics and different continents as well as classes with students talking about themselves and their families. It’s a good idea to have a big map on the wall if you’re talking about countries and nationalities. That way everyone can see exactly where different countries are located.
What Do You Do Every Day? by Maple Leaf Learning
A classic if you’re learning about daily routines. This is a great song to adapt to all the different activities you can do every day. Its clapping actions make the chant easy to learn and remember too. I normally use this as part of a daily routine memory chain game but you could also use it with smaller children to learn the different actions with a flashcard game in a circle or as part of any other game really.
On In Under By
This is the most important song that I use with all age groups when I’m teaching prepositions. It is so easy to demonstrate using any object and easy for the kids to remember too with the actions. You can adapt it to any preposition you want and little kids love to take turns putting an object in, on, under or by a container for the rest of the class to guess where it is. Maple Leaf Learning do have other Prepositions songs of which On In Under is another favorite. On, In, Under, By is probably the most versatile though and the simplest for smaller kids to understand.
Touch Your Head
It’s a cold, miserable day and you’ve got grumpy kids who are really not in the mood to be doing English. This is one of my favorite songs to warm them up and get them smiling again. It will cheer up even the most sulky pre-teen, especially if you can sing it along with the video and see who can do it the fastest. It’s also a great way of practicing body parts and actions. It’s a simple idea but it works perfectly. And I love Marty the Moose!
Let’s Make a Pizza Song
I love pizza and I use this song a lot when I’m teaching about food. It’s a good way of introducing different ingredients and types of food. You can also adapt it to different foods, not just pizza. I have, in the past, sung: Let’s make soup, Let’s make fruit salad, Let’s make ice cream. I just adapt the ingredients to the song. You could use this if you are actually making pizza in class to let the kids choose their topping. Alternatively, make cardboard pizzas and toppings.
How’s the Weather?
Another very useful song which I use in a lot of lessons. You could use it in a weather themed class or just at the beginning of a normal class to get the conversation started. If you are learning about weather or different countries, don’t forget to watch the International Weather Report with Marty. Older kids absolutely love it and find it really funny. Make your own weather report with flashcards on the board and let the kids decide the weather.
Silly Santa
This is one of Maple Leaf Learning’s silly but extremely effective moments. If you’re learning about Santa, Christmas, clothes etc., this is a really fun song to sing and one that children of all ages love. In the same silly but useful category, I would put the Whose Ears/Tail/Mouth/Eyes series of songs and Silly Easter Bunny.
Let’s Go to the Beach and Forest Dance
I’ve put these songs together as they both serve the same kind of purpose: to talk about animals and their habitats. If you’re doing a beach themed lesson or one about forests, these are both the perfect songs to talk about the animals who live there. They’re versatile as you can change the names of the animals if you are singing it without the video. You could also adapt them to sing about different habitats too if you wanted. “mountains, mountains, I love the mountains, marmot: etc. You can use the song to play a guessing game with flashcard where the children sing the song and you hold up the flashcard for them to guess the animal.
Seven Steps Song
Almost finished so I chose a counting song. There are quite a few different songs to practice counting but this is one of my favorites as it is so simple for very little children. You can use any object you want to practice singing and counting to seven and make it into a game. If you want a slightly more complicated counting song, you could use Counting Snowflakes which goes up to twenty or How Many Fingers Do You Have?
Bonus Song – The Octopus Song
Just because it’s one of my favorites and the kids love dancing to it.
Ok, so that’s more than ten. It was too difficult to narrow it down. What are your favorite Maple Leaf Learning songs? Any other goodies to add here? If you’d never heard of Maple Leaf Learning, do go and check out their YouTube channel, there is so much stuff on there as well as songs. If you’ve enjoyed this, you can find more of my Top 10 favorite songs about lots of different things here. To keep up to date with new articles, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page or sign up for email below.