Winter Song · Elementary Music · Grades K–3
The complete If I Were a Snowman lyrics, the skipping game, and a full teaching guide for kindergarten through 3rd grade. A winter favorite featuring re, swing time, phrase awareness, and barred instruments — everything you need to teach it confidently.
Full lyrics · all verses
The complete If I Were a Snowman lyrics. The song's gentle swing feel and imaginative text make it one of the most loved winter songs in the elementary music library.
About this song
If I Were a Snowman is one of the few genuinely good winter songs in the elementary repertoire — musically rich enough to teach real concepts while being immediately appealing to young students. The gentle swing feel gives students an immediate, bodily experience of swing time without any explanation needed. They feel it when they skip.
The song teaches phrase through the skipping and stopping activity — students skip or gallop around the room and stop to clap 3 times (or jump, or any other motion) on the phrase endings: "come and play," "so much fun," and "time to go." After playing several times, have students suggest their own motions. The phrase ending becomes a physical event before it's ever named.
"After doing this activity for a while, the kids will be tired out and ready to sit down and focus!"
— Deborah Skydell Pasternack, The Singing ClassroomThe solfège content centers on re, approached through the mi-re-do pattern. Instead of singing the poster words at the phrase endings, students sing "mi-re-do" — and the glockenspiel part reinforces this exact pattern. This song pairs naturally with Frosty the Snowman, which many children already know. Singing along to a picture book of Frosty makes a lovely add-on activity for the same class period.
The song contains only quarters, eighths, and half notes — making it a clean example of swing time where only the eighth notes are altered. This is easy to show students: the basic framework is simple, and the swing quality comes entirely from how those eighth notes are performed.
Teaching guide
The full video demonstration is inside a Singing Classroom subscription. Here's the core teaching sequence.
Teach the song using the poster, having students sing the written words while clapping 3 times — or doing any other motion you like — at the phrase endings. The poster makes the phrase structure visual from the start.
Have all children stand and scatter around the room. Sing while everyone skips or gallops. Stop and clap 3 times — or jump in place, or any other motion — on "come and play," "so much fun," and "time to go." After a few rounds, have kids suggest their own movements. You can also play the melody on piano, guitar, or xylophone and have the kids do the activity without singing.
Have students sing "mi-re-do" in place of the written words on the poster at the phrase endings, while you sing the rest of the song. This isolates and highlights re in a natural musical context. Some kids can also play mi-re-do on drums or unpitched percussion on those same three beats.
Follow the suggestions for K–1, then add the glockenspiel part. The pattern repeats exactly for each phrase and is particularly effective for emphasizing the mi-re-do pattern. Can be played on any barred instrument.
This song pairs naturally with Frosty the Snowman. Many children are already familiar with the song and enjoy listening along to a picture book. There are lots of books to choose from — it makes a lovely, low-key complement to the more active skipping activity.
Common questions
The full lyrics are: "If I were a snowman outside all day / I would wait for you to come and play / I would like to skate and jump and run / Riding on your sled would be so much fun! / But I'm just a snowman, made out of snow / When the sun comes out, it's time to go!" The three phrase endings — "come and play," "so much fun," and "time to go" — are where students stop and clap (or do another motion) during the skipping activity.
If I Were a Snowman works well for Kindergarten through 3rd grade. Kindergarteners enjoy the skipping game and the imagery. First and second graders can engage with the phrase awareness work and begin the re solfège connection. Third graders can handle the barred instrument arrangement and more formal work with phrase structure and re in context.
Swing time (also called swing feel or compound feel) refers to the uneven, lilting quality where pairs of notes are performed with a long-short pattern rather than evenly. If I Were a Snowman has this quality naturally — the melody bounces along with a gentle lilt that students feel immediately in their bodies when they skip. Teaching it through the skipping game means students experience swing time physically before they encounter it as a musical concept to be named or notated.
Re (the second degree of the scale, between do and mi) can be tricky to introduce because it doesn't have the distinctive character of sol-mi or the finality of do. If I Were a Snowman approaches re in a musical context that's singable and memorable — students are already singing re accurately by the time you draw attention to it. That "you've been singing this all along" moment is much more effective than introducing re in isolation.
More winter and seasonal songs
A winter mitten game with a beautiful arch structure. Perfect seasonal companion to If I Were a Snowman.
See teaching guide →A classic round introducing part singing. Do pentatonic, call and response, canon form.
See teaching guide →The classic counting out chant. Clear AA form and tiri-tiri — one of the most useful chants in the library.
See teaching guide →The real problem
Every teacher knows this feeling. You find a song, try it on Monday, and something goes sideways — the kids don't engage, you're not sure how to introduce it, the lesson loses momentum. It's not that the song was wrong. You just didn't have a clear picture of how it actually goes.
That's what makes The Singing Classroom different. Every song in the library — including this one — has a full video of Deborah teaching it with real students. You don't have to guess how to introduce it, how to structure the activity, or how to handle the tricky moments. You watch it. Then you teach it.
150+ songs. Every one demonstrated. No more hoping it works — you already know it will.
Watch Deborah teach If I Were a Snowman — the skipping game, phrase awareness activities, and barred instrument arrangement. If I Were a Snowman is just one of 150+ songs in the complete Singing Classroom library — every one with Deborah’s full video demonstration, teaching guide, and animated game instructions.
$19.95/month · $219.95/year
7-day free trial · access everything from day one
Start Your Free 7-Day Trial →Credit card required · Cancel anytime