Music is an excellent tool when it comes to supporting your child’s development. Whether it’s intellectual, emotional, social, motivational, motor, visual, or auditory development, activities involving musical elements offer great benefits for your little one’s mental and physical growth.

Below is a list of fun and engaging music games for kids that are easy to set up and simple to play:

1. Make Your Own Music

Make your own music is a cool idea not only for playtime at home and birthday parties but also in classrooms. This game helps encourage your child’s musical sense in a fun and entertaining way.

What you’ll need:

• Sheets of paper
• Color pens

How to play:

• Start by coming up with some symbols and denoting each one with a certain sound. For example, a square symbol means “clap”, a star means “stomp your foot”, a circle means “knock on the desk”, and a triangle means “snap your fingers”.
• Write this information on a sheet of paper and hang it up, or put it on a board so that all the children can see the instructions.
• Now, get your kid to compose their own music using the symbols only.
• Once done, let your child display their music. Watch as they perform the music and join in to help them follow the “notes” correctly.
• Your child will make their own melody by clapping, snapping, stomping, and knocking. The sequence and frequency will be up to their creative side.

2. Musical Chairs

A classic game that we all had a taste of growing up, musical chairs is an excellent exercise for developing auditory discrimination. It teaches children to move through objects and develop a sense of their position in space as they run around trying to find a chair to sit on without crashing into other players.

Here, children have to pay attention to the difference between sound and silence, all the while engaging their entire body during the game to promote sensory-motor coordination.

You can play musical chairs with your kid alone, but it’s best played with a minimum of 3 or 4 family members or friends.

What you’ll need:

• Chairs
• A device that plays music

How to play:

• Set out chairs in a circle (one less than the total number of players)
• Play the music and while it’s playing, everyone starts to dance around the room or run around the chairs.
• While everyone is moving, stop the music.
• Once the music stops, all players must sit on one of the chairs.
• Whoever didn’t get to a chair in time will sit out the next round.
• Repeat, removing a chair each round until there two people and one chair are left. The player who sits on the last remaining chair first is the winner.

3. Musical Statues

Thanks to the “freezing” action in mid-air, musical statues is a wonderful game when it comes to developing control of the body and strengthening it. You can play musical statues alone with your little one or with family members and friends.

What you’ll need:

• A device to play music

How to play:

• Play music on your device.
• While the music is playing, get all players to dance around the room.
• Stop the music every now and then. The silence is a cue for everyone to freeze in the exact position they were moving in when the music stopped.
• If you move while there’s no music, you’re “out”. For younger children, it’s more fun to just keep freezing without anyone having to go “out”.

4. Musical masterpiece

This game combines the best of both arts: drawing and music. It brings out your kid’s talent in the two departments, best played with several people or in classrooms.

What you’ll need:

• A music player
• Sheets of paper
• Color pens or pencils

How to play:

• Give each player a sheet of paper and some color pencils.
• Instruct the children to start drawing when they hear music playing and to stop drawing when the music stops.
• Once they stop drawing, each player leaves their paper and pens on the desk, move to another desk, and continue drawing and coloring in the sheet on that desk until the music stops again.
• Ask them to repeat the same pattern until you tell time’s up.
• In the end, each player goes back to their desks and looks at the final art masterpiece!.

5. Pass the Parcel

This game is an old favorite of many grown-ups, traditionally played at birthday parties. You can play it with your kids at home to get them active and listening carefully.

The best part about this game is that children will be crossing the midline each time they pass the parcel along. You can play with two people only (passing back and forth), but if 3 or more players join in, kids will cross the midline as they pass the parcel from their left to their right and vice versa.

What you’ll need:

• A music player
• Any object or gift

How to play:

• Wrap the item into several layers of newspaper or wrapping paper. Make the layers easy to remove.
• Play music and have the players pass the parcel in a clockwise direction (teach your kid what clockwise means while you’re at it).
• When the music stops, the person holding the parcel removes one layer of wrapping.
• When the music starts again, players keep passing the parcel around until the music stops again so another layer is removed.
• The person who removes the last layer to reveal the parcel wins.

Make sure you switch up the direction for each new round (clockwise to anti-clockwise). Also, see that the parcel is received using both hands and passed to the next person using both hands to ensure crossing the midline.

Wrap Up

There you have it, 5 music games for kids to encourage all kinds of mental and physical development.