Fish Lips...

In our K Folk Music Class we have been working on writing a song. We have been talking about how a song needs to tell a story and about rhyme and about tunes.

So in our class this week we finally wrote our first song.

We began by talking about their day and what story we wanted to tell.

It just happened that many of the kids had been on a field trip to the Lawrence Hall of Science on Friday. We talked about how they got there and what they saw. We began writing down words and thoughts on a big sheet of paper getting ideas for our song. Next we started talking about rhymes... "What rhymes with trip.... rip, hip, lip..." and on and on and as we talked (and laughed) we started getting some ideas and rhymes for our song.

Then we had to choose a tune and as all my classes have done, they choose "Twinkle, Twinkle." I asked them if they know who Mozart was and a couple of them did and I told them how Mozart really loved this tune as well. Now we have a tune and we had a story and we had some rhymes.

Now we were ready to sing our song. Because we wanted to make a video of our song we decided we needed some hand motions so we started singing the song and figuring out hand motions. Everyone got involved and pretty soon we were ready to record our new song on video.

Just then we heard a knock at the door and when we answered it who walks in but our very own helper, Leo. We told Leo about our song and he told them about when he was in the K Folk Music Class and how they had written a song, and he sang it for them. Then Leo picked up the video camera and we recorded our song.

The rest will be history as our song gets out into the world on our blog... enjoy our new song. We named it "Fish Lips"

"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"

We had lots of fun learning this old song that my mom used to sing to me. One of her favorites so me and my siblings would sing it all the time. When I picked up the kids from the playground the week after I taught them this song they started singing it as we marched into class

Jump Up

We have just started a new session of Folk Music at Berkeley Arts Magnet School. This is a PTA hosted after-school class for children in kindergarten. I am so appreciative of all the work that parents put into making sure that our children are exposed to new learning opportunities with the fantastic after-school classes.

It is amazing how much my kindergartners have learned and grown in only six months. With their growing reading skills we will start writing songs this session. We will also be making some "how-to" videos as well as work on new songs to record and post on our blog.

We hope you enjoy our singing, dancing song today.
We just got a new video camera so Leo is doing a little "on the job" training.