HeidiSongs
Information and pictures about HeidiSongs and Heidi Butkus are from the following website: https://heidisongs.com/
Many classrooms use music and movement to help students learn. I pull songs from a variety of artists and platforms but most often use a program called HeidiSongs to help my students learn colors, shapes, letters, numbers, and other basic concepts. Below learn about the HeidiSongs creator Heidi Butkus and why her songs are helping to engage students in active multi-sensory learning.
Heidi Butkus (1963-present) is an educator with 30+ years of teaching experience, a reading specialist, author, song writer, and staff development trainor. In California she taught grades preschool through 2nd grade. While teaching, she began looking for engaging ways to help her students learn numbers, shapes, and sight words. She began creating and singing her own songs. Her students' success and engagement was noticed by other teachers and Heidi was encouraged to share her songs. Heidi continued to write more songs and began recording them on CDs. She eventually went into a professional studio to update her songs and then began producing videos, workbooks, and story books to help support student learning. Heidi has presented at educational conferences nationwide and has won awards for her CDs and videos. She is CEO of Teach and Sing Inc. and sells products on the website Heidisongs.com in addition to writing a blog for teachers and parents about educational topics.
MultiSensory Learning and Brain Research
Through much research, Heidi found that her songs incorporated multi-sensory teaching, meaning that multiple pathways are used in the brain to learn. When singing a HeidiSong students see it, hear it, say it, and do it all at the same time. Multi-sensory learning sends multiple messages out into a child's brain. If a pathway is blocked, students are still able to learn through another pathway. As a teacher I have seen students struggle to identify basic concepts but when that concept is paired with a visual, movement, and/or song students make a connection that wasn't there before.
The use of HeidiSongs in my 4K classroom
I use HeidiSong videos to teach the following concepts: shapes, colors, letters, and numbers. Students find the videos engaging and fun, often not even realizing that they are learning. Songs are sung to familiar tunes and are often short in length thus easily remembered. I personally find the letter songs to be a little long and difficult to remember but they address the letter name and how to write it in uppercase and lowercase. Each Monday students sit and watch one video. Then it is rewatched and students are encouraged to sing and follow the actions being shown. For the remainder of the week during large group students stand, watch, listen, sing, and do the actions for each song and concept that is being learned. When possible, we sing and act out our songs for other staff members in the building. We especially enjoy sharing our skills with our library aide Mrs. Johnson. Our 4K weekly newsletter always tells about the concepts we are learning for the week. Ask your child to sing you the songs for the week. They may even sing them during the day on their own as songs often get stuck in our heads.
Below is a sample of HeidiSong videos. The videos with the graphics are newer versions of songs and the videos showing only Heidi are older. I use a variety of both types of videos. You can also go to the HeidiSongs website for more details. https://heidisongs.com/