Nancy Stewart: Over 200 Free Songs and Resources

Nancy Stewart is an American musician who is extremely passionate about music and early learning, and incredibly generous with her resources, which she provides free of charge on two different websites (see below). In 2010, Nancy visited Australia and wrote a song called Jump especially for our National Simultaneous Storytime. Here are five different ways to engage with Nancy’s knowledge and materials:

Visit www.nancymusic.com to download over 200 free songs of the month, written precisely with early years and/or primary school aged group programs in mind. Each song page includes an mp3 for free download, the sheet music, the lyrics, instructions/tips for actioning the song, and any additional resources like printable books or felt board templates. My all-time favourite song of Nancy’s is When I Hear the Music. If you visit the Playlists page, you can download themed groups/collections of songs, so that you don’t have to save each one separately.
Visit www.singwithourkids.com for information about singing and early literacy, a free song library, musical book recommendations and instructions, videos, vocal care tips, resource downloads, and more. The Baker’s Dozen collection is fantastic as a cheap and easy giveaway to families, ensuring that they have at least one collection of classic songs at home.
Download Nancy’s super useful workshop PDFs, Sing Into Reading: Songs and Ideas to Promote Early Literacy and Singable Songs for Storytimes, plus the handy one-page handout of The Music and Early Literacy Connection. She’s even grouped together quicklinks to all the songs profiled in the handouts on her main Workshops page, so you can easily download the related mp3s and sheet music.
Visit Nancy Stewart’s YouTube channel, or watch a playlist of her videos here:
To browse 17 different videos, click on the three bars in the top left corner below. Or, press play to queue the entire playlist.

Nancy Stewart: Music and Early Learning

Download sample PowerPoint presentations of Nancy’s first annual song collection (2001), for use in library sessions, and to use as a template for building your own presentation repository of audio and lyrics. In PowerPoint, go to view >> slide master to replace the Early Learning Continuum letterhead with your own library’s branding.