Activity
Bake, Sing, and Sell Hot Cross Buns
Created May 17, 2024 | Added August 16, 2025
In this imaginative lesson, students ‘bake’ with beanbags, step and sing while selling their wares, and explore musical concepts through play.
- Circle Baking Game
- Students sit in a circle, each with a bean bag (“the dough”).
- Make the buns: Press–Press–Turn (to the rhythm of Hot Cross Buns).
- Ask: “Do you like sprinkles?” → “Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle” (sung on the “one-a-penny” phrase).
- Bake: Slide the buns into the oven for 8 counts (sing up the scale).
- Put on a glove, take them out, and “eat them up” (yum!).
- “Let’s make some more!” Repeat the process, singing the song each time.
- Selling the Buns
- Students stand and move to their own “corner” (learning independent space).
- Step the rhythm of the song while holding up their “wares.”
- Call on a student to sing the price.
- Some students act as customers from the “Land of the Singing Voice.”
- To buy and sell, students must sing their exchanges.
- Traveling to New Towns
- After selling out, students “ride” to the next town (on bikes, scooters, airplanes, etc.).
- When they hear the Hot Cross Buns song, they know to step, sing, and sell again.
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About the Author(s)
Michael Joviala
Michael Joviala is a composer/improviser/performer and educator in New York City. In 2020, he earned the diplôme supérieur from the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva and is the director of the Dalcroze Teacher Training Program at the Lucy Moses School in New York. He teaches Dalcroze eurhythmics to students of all ages at …
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