Folk Song · Stick Game · Grades 4–6
Sarasponda lyrics, how to play the rhythm stick partner game, safety tips for stick tossing, and a complete teaching guide for grades 4–6. Fa, Re, anacrusis, ta-m-ti, steady beat. A nonsense-word folk song with one of the most satisfying partner games in upper elementary music.
Sarasponda lyrics · nonsense folk song
The complete Sarasponda lyrics — pure nonsense words of indeterminate origin. Many sources describe the song as Dutch and associated with spinning, but no firm evidence supports this. The words are memorable precisely because they're meaningless — students sing them with full commitment and no overthinking.
The stick game
Teaching the song before adding the sticks helps students learn the stick pattern more quickly — the pattern goes so naturally with the melody that the physical and musical elements reinforce each other.
The teaching sequence has a very specific order that matters — song secure before sticks, solo tossing before partner tossing, flight paths mapped before any simultaneous tossing. Skipping steps leads to dropped sticks, frustrated students, and the occasional crushed finger. Deborah's full demonstration walks through every stage with real students, including the exact moment to introduce the anacrusis using the sticks as a physical illustration of the pick-up beat.
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About this song
Sarasponda is one of those songs that upper elementary students take completely seriously — partly because the stick game requires genuine focus and coordination, and partly because the nonsense words free them from any self-consciousness about the lyrics. There's nothing to analyze or feel embarrassed about. They just sing and play.
The stick game teaches steady beat at a level that older students who think they've mastered it will find genuinely challenging. Tossing and catching sticks to a partner while singing a melody and maintaining the pulse is a multi-layered coordination task. Students who struggle with steady beat in a hand-clapping context often improve noticeably when the physical stakes are higher.
"Sarasponda works for grades 4–6 because the stick game is cool enough that students want to get it right. The solfège teaching is built in — fa appears constantly and is approached in many different ways, so you can do a complete fa lesson using only this song."
— Deborah Skydell Pasternack, The Singing ClassroomFa solfège: The rest of the song is pentatonic, but fa appears with great frequency and is approached in a variety of ways — making this one of the richest songs in the library for teaching fa. You can do an entire fa lesson using only Sarasponda, pointing out each appearance and the different intervals by which fa is approached.
Re solfège: Re is easily isolated in a clean mi-re-do pattern. Coming from do pentatonic, students hear re arrive in a familiar tonal context — which makes its identification straightforward.
Anacrusis: The pick-up note is physically demonstrated by the sticks — clicking on the upbeat, striking on the downbeat. After this experience, the concept of anacrusis is permanently anchored to something students have felt in their hands.
Ta-m-ti: This rhythm pattern appears three times in the song. All other rhythms are eighth notes and quarter notes, making ta-m-ti easy to isolate and identify once students know the song well.
What teachers say
"5th graders who roll their eyes at hand-clapping games take Sarasponda completely seriously. The sticks raise the stakes. Students who never focus suddenly can't afford not to — if you miss the beat, you drop the stick. It's the best steady beat activity I have for upper elementary."
"The anacrusis teaching moment with the sticks is brilliant. When they click together on the pick-up and strike down on the beat, students feel the upbeat-downbeat relationship in their hands. After that, the concept is theirs permanently."
"Fa appears so many times and in so many different contexts in this song that I can do my entire fa unit using only Sarasponda. The nonsense words mean students aren't distracted by meaning — they just listen to the pitches."
More upper elementary songs & stick games
Four-part round with melodic improvisation over a pentatonic ostinato. Low sol, internal hearing.
See teaching guide →The music theory memory game. Best review activity for upper elementary. Every child engaged.
See teaching guide →The partner clap game that never gets old. Syncopa, low sol, do-based pentatonic. Grades 4–6.
See teaching guide →Common questions
The Sarasponda lyrics are: "Sarasponda, sarasponda, / Sarasponda ret set set. / Sarasponda, sarasponda, / Sarasponda ret set set. / Ah do-ray oh, / Ah do-ray boom-day oh, / Ah do-ray boom-day ret set set, / Ah-say pah-say oh." These are nonsense syllables of indeterminate origin. Many sources associate the song with Dutch spinning, but this hasn't been firmly established. The words are memorable precisely because they're meaningless — students sing them without overthinking.
There are four specific safety steps that must happen in order before partner tossing begins. Skipping any of them is how students get hurt. All four are covered in detail in the teaching video — read them there before introducing the game to your class.
Sarasponda appears to be pure nonsense — the words have no established meaning. Many sources claim the song is Dutch and related to spinning (a "ret set set" being associated with a spinning wheel), but no firm historical evidence supports this. The origins are genuinely indeterminate. The words are worth sharing with students as an example of how music can be entirely meaningful and satisfying even when the syllables carry no semantic content — the sounds themselves are the point.
The anacrusis (pick-up note) is physically demonstrated by the sticks: the sticks click together on the pick-up beat, then strike downwards for the downbeat. This gives students a kinesthetic experience of the upbeat-downbeat relationship before any notation work. After feeling the pick-up in their hands — the preparatory click followed by the downstroke — the concept of anacrusis is anchored to a physical memory that persists long after the lesson.
Yes — rolled magazines or catalogs taped securely work well as a substitute for rhythm sticks. They're lighter, slightly softer, and just as effective for the tapping and tossing mechanics. If you don't have a full class set of rhythm sticks, rolled magazines are a practical alternative that most teachers can assemble quickly. Apply the same safety protocols: agree on angles, keep them vertical while tossing, and map the flight path before partner tosses.
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.
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