Covid-Safe Music Games

19 May 2021Blog

Covid-safe music activities for primary school children

Here’s a list of Covid-safe music games for you to play in school. These are suitable for KS1 and KS2.

Sit in a circle, go around and tell a story saying a sentence each, but the start of each sentence must start with the next letter of the alphabet.
Example: ‘A lovely little bear went off to the woods to find some honey’ the next person could say ‘But suddenly they tripped over and fell into a trap hole!’
Continue until you have got through the whole alphabet and encourage the story to make sense and follow on from the previous sentence.
Great to play at the start or at the end of a lesson

Create a space for a child to stand at a bus shelter (socially distanced.)
Explain that this is the only spot at the shelter, and everyone wants it because it is pouring with rain.
Stand and demonstrate yourself first, asking for a volunteer to come and try to remove you giving an excuse as to why you should go.
Examples could be ‘because I’m having a baby!’, or as extreme as ‘the floor is lava right there!’ Encourage them to think out of the box.

Ask the children if they know which animal has a great memory
Tell them about elephants and that we’re going to test our own memories.
Ask one child to be the elephant and tell them that everyone is going to name their favourite (food, colour, anything) and at the end they have to remember.
Once each child has said their favourite thing point at a child and see if the elephant can remember what it was!

Ask the children to sit together and choose one child to go to the far end of the class with their back to the rest of the children.
Point silently at one of the children who should walk up to the child’s back and say, ‘Good afternoon -name-, Guess who I am?’
Ask the child to guess who it was. Repeat with different children guessing and speaking and make it harder by asking the children to disguise their voices!

Ask the children what they say when someone says, ‘how are you?’ When they respond with ‘fine, good, okay’ say isn’t that boring?
Ask them to think of crazy, exciting ways to respond. Really encourage them to use their imagination. For instance, ‘I feel magical, mysterious, incredible!’ Go around the room asking each child how they are.
They can only respond with a cool word and they must ask how you are too! Or even get some sentences going, ‘I feel as fabulous as a fluttering fairy!’
This could be a great game to start the week with and get everyone in a creative mood.

This simple game is great to create energy in the room or get the children to focus to you giving out commands. When you say ‘go’ all the children walk around filling the space in the room but remaining one metre away from each other.
When you say ‘stop’ they must freeze. Try this a few times and get them used to it. Then add two more instructions…
When you say ‘clap’ they all clap, and when you say ‘jump’ they jump. Mix up the instructions and even add some music in the background. To make it harder you can even tell them you’re going to play it with opposites so stop becomes go and jump becomes clap etc.

This is a great game to play with a new class or if you have new students.
Ask the children to make a circle and choose someone to start, this person must make eye contact with someone else in the circle, say their name and move to their place.
The person whose name you called must pick another person in the circle, say their name and take their place. Continue until everyone has had a go, great for a warmup/ starter activity.

Fibby Wibby Lie is a fun Drama game that us adults may have also played before as two truths and a lie! This game allows children to be creative while having fun!
Ask your child, or group of children to come up with three facts or stories about themselves, two must be true and one must be a lie.
They must then recite these three facts to you, or even better a group who has to guess which one the lie is!
This is a great icebreaker activity to start a class with, or a fun game to play at home with your family.

Fortunately, unfortunately is a fun drama game that can allow your class to be creative and inspired!
Explain that you are going to tell a story that is a series of fortunate and unfortunate events- check that they know the difference!
Start the story with unfortunately and allow the next person in the circle to continue with the word fortunately.
When you get to the end of the circle finish the story with ‘the end!’ Practice it a few times to pick up the fluence and try to get the sentences to correlate so that the story actually makes sense.