There are a number of preschool songs about trees, but what are they teaching about trees?

I love to use song to reinforce learning concepts. Songs make learning fun and meaningful. The songs below were adapted from traditional children’s songs to teach early learning concepts and information about trees for young children.

1. I’m and Old Oak Tree – an action song to teach the parts of the tree, to the familiar tune of I’m a little teapot. This song has been used in my class to support imitation and naming basic parts of a tree.

2. I Have a Little Nut Tree – sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme – I have a little nut tree, this song features a squirrel who comes to a tree to find nuts. Finding none, the squirrel is sad. Nuts are added to the tree and counted one at a time. This song was used in my classroom to talk about things that grow on trees, naming nuts that grow on trees and to practice counting up to 10. I would choose a child to tell me how many nuts to put on the tree and we would count them together.

3. Walking Through the Forest – An version of the preschool song Walking Through the Jungle. In this song I use a tree with small soft animals peeking through the holes. As we go through the forest we look at the different parts of the tree, and try to identify the animals that live there. This song was used in my class to learn about animals that live in and on trees. In a regular, non-Covid classroom I would hide the animals in the tree with only a small part peeking out and have the children put there hand in the hole to see which animal they find.

4. Way Up High in the Apple Tree – this song is a counting down song. Using the tree prop, after each verse we shake the tree until an apple falls down and then count how many apples are left. At the end of the song the apples are revealed in my tummy and we count them together. It can also be used for early phonics and for children working on speech sounds. One line of the song is about eating the apple, I emphasise the mmmmmmm sound and show them how to imitate the sound.

5. 5 Little Leaves – This is another counting down song. As the wind blows the children join you by blowing the tree to make a leaf fall to the ground. You could use different kinds of leaves and identify which tree they came from.

6. Tree Seasons Song – this song is sung to the tune of the wheels on the bus and teaches about what happens to the trees in different seasons.

7. The Green Grass Grows – the green grass grows is a song about the parts of the tree and the sequence in which it grows. I used it to teach positional language and sequencing. The audio for this one has been added to a powerpoint showing the sequence of the tree growing and visuals for the positional words.