In this Preschool Prodigies music lesson, we play the Christmas classic, “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

In “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” we…

-Play two notes at a time, making small chords to accompany us as we sang the song
-Use 6 musical notes, C D E F G and A to play simplified version of several chords.

We Wish You A Merry Christmas Follow Up Activities

One of the best ways to play this song is as a duet, especially for early learners! One player takes the notes C D E while the other player takes F G and A. This will make playing the song easier (by minimizing the amount of bells you have to play) AND provide a different kind of challenge and joy of playing a duet!

If you don’t have any bells, you can instead practice clapping when the bells are supposed to be played. This will help build your child’s sense of rhythm, and this is an especially good lesson for that because it’s in a different time signature than most of the songs.

If you clap on the downbeat of each measure (where the bells happen), you’d essentially be singing “Clap 2 3, Clap 2 3.”

This is different from most of the songs that would look more like “Clap 2 3 4, Clap 2 3 4,”

In musical terms, this song is 3/4 time, while most of the songs in the curriculum are in 4/4 time. That’s why trying to clap along can be a good challenge with this particular lesson.

If clapping on JUST the first beat seems weird, you can TAP the first beat and clap the second and third beat (just follow the tambourine in the music).

That would look more like “tap clap clap, tap clap clap,” etc.

What's Next?

In the next lesson, we’ll play the New Year’s Eve classic, “Auld Lang Syne.” This song will also have TWO bells happening at the same time for the whole song!