Are you scrambling to find engaging Easter-themed music activities that won’t take hours to prepare?

Easter brings a perfect opportunity to bring some seasonal joy into your music classroom — without the stress of planning complex lessons from scratch!

Traditionally, music teachers often turn to the same Easter music lesson plans year after year:

• Creating and playing with simple egg shakers from plastic eggs filled with rice or beans.
• Colouring worksheets with Easter-themed music symbols.
• Singing songs about bunnies and eggs!

These activities are fine… but they often lack the deeper musical learning that makes a lesson truly valuable — not to mention, your students have probably done them all before!

But finding Easter music activities that are both educational AND fun can be challenging, especially when you’re already stretched thin with planning and teaching.

You want lessons that engage students while still teaching important musical concepts, not just “keeping them busy” with holiday-themed busywork. What if you could offer Easter activities that get students excited while developing real musical skills? Activities that connect to curriculum standards while still celebrating the season?

That’s why I’ve put together three ready-to-use Easter music lesson plan ideas that you can implement RIGHT AWAY — regardless of your resources or teaching experience! These go beyond the basic activities to offer meaningful musical experiences with an Easter twist!

Do your younger students struggle to remember music theory concepts?

This Easter egg theory match game can help!

Here’s how it works:

1. Create some “Easter egg flashcards” with pictures of Easter eggs on one side.
2. Create music theory match symbols and terms on the other side, based on what you’re currently working on:
   1. On one half of the eggs, draw music theory symbols or terms (quarter note, half rest, forte, piano, etc.)
   2. On the other half, write out matching names or definitions for each one.
3. Lay the “eggs” down in a grid on the floor.
4. Have students take turns to find an egg, then search for its matching pair.

If this seems too much work to create all these classroom sized flashcards and laminate them, then you don’t have to print or prepare anything at all! You can use our digital screen presentation below, all set up and ready to go for you!

This activity gets students moving, learning, and having FUN while reinforcing essential music concepts.

Simply bookmark the link below, and load it up in your classroom!

Extension Idea: For a quick assessment, have students write one or two of the music theory terms and symbols they found in the eggs in their workbooks.

This not only reinforces their learning but gives you valuable insight into what concepts they’re understanding!

For early finishers, challenge them to create their own matching pairs with other musical concepts, not included in the game. This turns assessment into a fun extension activity that promotes student ownership of their musical knowledge!

Are you looking for a way to breathe new life into a traditional song that many music teachers use?

Hot Cross Buns could be described as a music teacher’s “staple”, particularly for those using recorder in the classroom. 

Its easy B-A-G fingering has made it a standard for music teachers using the recorder, at all times of the year, not just at Easter!

We’ve given it a much needed “Fun Music Company revamp” with this new arrangement!

This multi-style arrangement of Hot Cross Buns transforms this simple tune into an exciting musical experience that students will ASK to play, over and over again!

Click play to preview:

Here’s what makes this arrangement special.

1 . It transforms it into different musical styles:

• Rock style
• Jazz style (with swing rhythm)
• Disco style (with shorter articulation)
• Synth-pop style (with a strong beat and alternative rhythm)

2. It includes new lyrics, discussing the various styles of hot cross buns available at Easter. (chocolate, fruitless etc).

What this does is give an important non-musical connection point for students.

You can discuss:

• What style of hot cross buns do you like best?

This also leads to the discussion of style in the music:

• Which of the musical styles do you connect with the most? 

3. It is a FLEXIBLE arrangement, and can be used many different ways.

It includes a flexible melody line that can either be played on recorder, sung, or both!

• For the recorder, most of it stays on B-A-G, however it also introduces a D in the last variation. This could be an extra challenge for students, however if they’re not up to it yet they can switch to singing for this variation.
• If you are not using recorders in your classroom, students can sing the melody instead. This opens opportunities to discuss different ways of using the voice for different styles. Using a shorter style for disco, or half-spoken for the modern synth-pop.

It includes a flexible tuned percussion part, that can be played on xylophones, or individual pitch instruments such as Boomwhackers.

The tuned percussion part only contains two notes, so older students can play both notes (one in each hand) and younger students can do one colour each.

There are also written untuned percussion parts, for tambourines, shakers, claves and rhythm sticks.

Like all arrangements included in the Fun Music Company Curriculum program, students need to READ the music and have specific notes to play. They aren’t ever just given an untuned percussion instrument and told to play along. That is a recipe for poor behavior and distraction! If they are given a specific part and have to follow it that is one of the first steps to keeping them on track!

This arrangement works beautifully for grades 3-4, but can easily be simplified for younger students or made more complex for older ones. This is part of our forthcoming seasonal supplement for the Fun Music Company Curriculum program, where we will provide activities for this song which suit their stage of development.

This is a brand new arrangement this year – so we’d love for you to try it out with your students and send us your feedback!

Specifically, we’d love to know which classes really loved it and how the difficulty of the parts suited your students.

Maybe this is one for you, and maybe it isn’t!

The chorus Hallelujah from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is one of the most popular pieces of classical music ever written. Even in the most secular parts of society, we would suggest that most people have heard a phrase or two from this piece in their lifetimes.

In Christian circles of course this piece is revered and celebrated, not just at Easter but at Christmas and all throughout the year.

The structured approach of our CONNECT lesson on this piece helps students deeply connect with this masterpiece while developing critical listening skills.

While it has a religious text, it is well known that Handel wrote this piece for the concert hall, and not specifically for the church.

Teachers may, or may not decide to incorporate this into their music education programs, depending on how much their particular school can include religion. We understand that not all schools can include religious references, so we have not included any pieces that have religious connections (such as Handel’s Messiah) in the 140 lessons of our standard CONNECT program in the Fun Music Company Music Curriculum.

Rather, we have chosen to develop a seasonal supplement, which will gradually become available to members of the Fun Music Company curriculum over the coming year or two. We are creating additional content to mark holidays and events, such as Easter and Christmas, that teachers may or may not decide to include.

For those in religious schools, incorporating a lesson on Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at Easter is a perfect way to celebrate and discuss the meaning of Easter. This can help in making it about more than just about the Easter Bunny and Easter Egg hunts in your classroom!

This CONNECT lesson has many different educational outcomes for the classroom:

• Students will learn about the musical format of ORATORIO, and how it is different from the form of Opera.
• Students will learn how the entire work of Messiah was created by Handel in just 24 days, and can discuss and explore how that may have occurred.
• Students will think about what it was like for Handel to compose music over 300 years ago, without access to today’s modern technology.
• Students will think about what made this work become popular, and why it has stayed popular for over 300 years.

Finally we have included a fun “flash mob” video of Hallelujah being performed in a shopping centre to share with the students, which will help them explore whether or not music can bring joy to strangers.

Even those in secular schools may be able to consider including this lesson, as we have tried to avoid including any religious teaching or meaning on our slides. 

We have left any religious meanings or interpretations open for discussion. Therefore, it is up to you, the teacher to decide what you can include in YOUR classroom! We think about these things very carefully, and always structure our content to put the teacher in control, while giving a broad framework that makes lesson planning easy.

As with all of our CONNECT lessons, this lesson includes:

• Preframe video. Gives some background and context of the music they’re about to hear. As the teacher, you can always choose to either show this video or skip it and teach the content yourself.
• Embedded Youtube video performance. We’ve done the hard work and found the best performances of this work.
• Fact based worksheet. A worksheet with important facts, and classroom presentation to go through the answers.
• Discussion Questions. Carefully considered discussion questions to open up deep learning for your students.

Click below to access and bookmark the classroom presentation for use in your classroom.

You can also access and print the associated PDF worksheet by clicking the worksheet icon below.

With these three Easter-themed music lessons, you’ve got some great suggestions for music classes during Easter week!

Start with the playful Easter Egg Theory Match. It gets your younger students excited about music symbols! Then move to the multi-style Hot Cross Buns arrangement. It develops performance skills in your middle grades! Finally, try the sophisticated CONNECT lesson on Handel’s Hallelujah chorus. It builds critical listening skills in your upper primary or elementary students!

You now have a progression of activities that marks the Easter season in a fun and meaningful way. Each one teaches essential musical concepts in an engaging way, and it matches in style with other music curriculum content.

These lessons require minimal prep time but deliver MAXIMUM student engagement and learning outcomes!

The best part? They are FREE, provided with our compliments, from the Fun Music Company!

While these three lesson ideas will add immediate Easter excitement to your classroom, I understand that planning an entire music curriculum can still be overwhelming.

That’s exactly why we created the Fun Music Company Curriculum Program!

It’s not just another resource with random activities — it’s a COMPLETE system designed by music teachers FOR music teachers who want to:

“The Fun Music Co is the GOLD STANDARD in music education!  I look forward to teaching with these programs “

Michelle, Elementary School Music Teacher

The curriculum includes projection-ready materials, assessment tools, differentiation guides, and so much more — all organized in a way that makes sense for anyone teaching music.

Click here to learn more about the Fun Music Company Curriculum Program »

How will YOU celebrate Easter in your music classroom?

Share your ideas in the comments below.

Happy Easter music-making!