Down by the Bay | Free Music Lesson Plan (Composing)

Big Idea

Unlock your students' creativity with this free, no-prep music lesson plan. Your students will invent their own verses to "Down by the Bay" and illustrate their ideas, connecting the worlds of music composition and art!

Grade Level: K-1
Activity: Singing, Rhyming & Drawing
Skill: Creating Musical Verses

Students will create additional verses to "Down by the Bay" and add their own visual art to encourage creativity and understand the relationships between music and the arts.

This lesson is designed to fulfill the 2014 National Standard for Music:
With guidance, personal choices in selecting and creating musical ideas (such as improvising or composing) demonstrate and explain personal reasons for selecting one idea over another. (Creating - MU:Cr1.1.Ka)

Down by the Bay | Free Lead Sheet
Paper or Drawing App

Music Lesson Plan

Step 1
Ask students, "Who is ready to be a composer and artist? Today we will be creating new verses to the song Down by the Bay. Before we do that, let's make sure everyone knows the song."

Step 2
Teach the song Down by the Bay by singing each phrase and asking the students to echo you. Continue the echo pattern until you reach the phrase, "Did you ever see a bear combing his hair?" On this phrase, you will sing the question and the class will answer with, "Down by the bay."

Step 3
Continue singing additional verses in the same way to build confidence.

Step 4
Ask students to recall the animals mentioned in the song and the words that rhyme with each animal (bear-hair, bee-knee, moose-goose, whale-tail). Ask students, either in cooperative groups or as a class, to create additional verses to the song.

Step 5
Sing the song again, incorporating the new verses created by the students.

Step 6
Using paper or a drawing app, ask students to draw pictures of the animals in the verses they created. Have them write their rhyming sentence below the picture.