New Year's Groove

"New Year's Groove" is a funky bashtastic dance song for your young kids to sing and move to before or after the New Year celebration! It's layered with rhythm instruments and synthetic sounds for easy inspiration. All movements we suggest are stationary, but you can change that as you need for your students.

Movements include bouncing and snapping during the verse. (If they're still learning to snap, tapping is a fine substitute.) During the chorus, the movements are pantomimed after being announced by a spoken solo. (If you prefer, you could have all or some do the spoken words). In all cases, the action is sung or spoken first, then performed.

At bar 13, a solo cello joins the rhythm first, followed by a solo violin a few bars later. This fun and funky section is the backdrop for the New Year's words and actions. The description of each is written on the music, but you can alter these if you want a different action. For example, you might try to flash numbers with fingers (ten, nine, eight, etc.) during the countdown measures. You could also use different words, but try to keep them pertinent to the New Year's theme – noise makers, January, Times Square, balloons, midnight, winter, and so on. Let students help figure out what actions might work with each, too. (How do you represent Times Square anyway?)