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Hey Santa, Ho Santa
Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for Hey Santa, Ho Santa.
This song originally was written for the “Littles” in an elementary school setting. With these young singers having only a few months of school before December concerts roll around, it is imperative to choose repertoire that is simple to sing. Songs that work best have simple melody lines, repeated lyrics, simple rhythmic elements and if possible, actions (which help the students remember the words).
Teach by rote
- Sing one line at a time and have students echo back each line after they hear it.
- After singing the song one line at a time, double up lines for longer listening and longer phrases to repeat.
- Sing the song in its entirety.
- As a way to practice, alternate the teacher singing a phrase, students singing the next phrase.
Add actions
- As the students are learning the song the teacher may do the actions, reinforcing the lyrics for the students. Initially, when the students are learning the words, they do not need to include the actions the teacher is doing, but they will be seeing those actions. Once they are more comfortable with the singing, they can add the actions.
- Actions can help students remember the words they are supposed to be singing. Keep in mind that actions can also distract students from singing. Evaluate and decide for your group.
- A list of suggested actions is provided on the lyrics page.
Breath marks
Discuss where it makes the most sense to take a breath. The music is written with very few rests. Breathing should occur in natural breaks in the lyrics. Using the score, singers can look for the end of sentences, or commas that separate parts of a phrase. Decide where it feels most comfortable to take a breath and mark those spots in the score so breaths can be practiced consistently.
Performance suggestion
Add colourful scarves to this song to create an interesting visual element to the performance. Give each student one scarf. To avoid scarf dropping, scarves may be fastened to the wrist with a gentle knot (if the scarf is large enough) or tie one corner of the scarf to an elastic band and slide the elastic band over the student’s hand to create a “drop-proof” scarf addition to the performance.
Hey Santa, Ho Santa
I originally wrote this song in French for my P/1 immersion students to sing at the December school concert. The original song was Ho Ho, Père Noël and it worked very well for my young singers. The song was well received and when the English students needed a song the next year, I decided to write an English version. The direct translation of the lyrics as “Ho Ho Santa Claus” did not fit as well in English (and what rhymes with Claus?) and using the full name of Santa Claus later in the song also did not fit with my melody line. I played around with the words and decided to use “Hey Santa, Ho Santa” as the repeating line. The rest of the lyrics also are not a direct translation (which rarely works), but I made sure Santa was still traveling up and down, and in many directions as he flew around the world. With my “Littles” I find it helps if they have actions, so I created lyrics that could be supported with lots of actions. We added colourful scarves to create a super fun visual addition to the song and Hey Santa, Ho Santa had its debut as an effective, easy-to-sing, crowd-pleasing concert song.
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