Songs for Saints/Heroes

So... I wrote a bunch of songs when Moonshine and I were doing her unit study/block of the saints for Grade 2. I felt having music to go with this block really enlivened the experience for us, and she absolutely loved every minute of it.

I've got a whole pile of them here, and I've been trying to figure out the best way to share them with you so that if you want to use them in your own lessons, you would have both the sheet music and a sample to listen to. I think I've got it figured out.

As of today I have my own little channel on YouTube and my very first video (huge learning curve for me!). Moonshine was quite eager to have her flute playing and vocals recorded for the experience. Anyway, I hope you like it. And if you would like to hear more of our songs, please let me know and we'll try to put more up soon.

Also, if you use it to enliven your own homeschooling lessons, I'd love to hear about it.

Songs on Sunday

The rain kept us in all weekend.

We spent most of Sunday singing together and playing music and then recording it. We had such a blast!

It all started when Sunburst realized that her rat Ronia didn't have a signature song. A while ago Einstein, the dad, made up a reggae song for Sunburst's rat Pepper, and all the kids sing back-up on it. It's very cute. But poor Ronia, Sunburst felt, was feeling a bit left out. So Einstein came up with the chords, and Sunburst set to work creating "Redwall-style" lyrics with three verses and a chorus. Here's just a taste:

"If'n you see a rat who's sweet as can be
Who can cuddle like a babe an' seem so free
Eat like a hare an' go like a flow
An' have a belly white as the snow

Yer lookin' at
Ronia, Ronia
Love 'er, hug 'er, hold 'er
Ronia, Ronia..."

We were having so much fun that we decided to change the words around into a birthday song for Einstein's mom. Yep, we're one of those families that will call on your birthday and sing the most ridiculous things just to show you how much you're loved-- our style falls curiously somewhere between the Partridge and the Addams families. (Did the Addams Family ever sing?) Anyway...

There was quite a bit of flute music going on, too. I've been writing a lot of songs lately to go with Moonshine's lessons, but I've been struggling with finding the time it takes to write them all out in musical notation. Now that Moonshine has really taken off with the flute, she has been delightedly compiling each song she learns into her own music book. This is great fun, and such a joy for her! Except that she has to wait around for me to write them out. Waiting for mom is... well, not so much fun.



My ultimate plan with having Moonshine compile this music book is so I can eventually teach her to read the music that she already knows, like I did with Sunburst. Ergo, it's important to have the songs all written down properly.

Enter the new love of my life-- Finale Notepad. I don't have a ton of free time to sit around and write things out, but I can enter them into this software, tweak and tweak, and play it back until it sounds right. I was so inspired by how quickly this process went, the songs just came flying. The program is easy enough for Sunburst to work on her own. And it's a great way to self-check your own musical writing, at least for me, because sometimes I screw up. It's true. Or worse yet, I make a song up and completely forget it an hour later. I hope that's a sign of a full life and not an aging brain. ;-)

Here's a simple little math song:



Don't forget to notice the clever title. ;-)

I am Robin Red

Sunburst has been learning to play the pentatonic flute since February. I've been using David Darcy's booklet/cd set Playing the Pentatonic Flute and the Pentatonic Recorder to teach myself so that I can teach her. I can't say enough wonderful things about this booklet. It has changed the way I think about music and my own musical capabilities.

For instance, I now think capable as opposed to incapable. I live with Einstein who is a musical genius. He can, and does, play anything he can get his hands on. But he can't teach me... he's my husband after all, and I have this Complex about music. Or shall I say had. I no longer play secretively in the laundry room. David Darcy has brought me into the light.

And now I can give that to Sunburst.

Our second form drawing block was based on a story I made up about the adventures of Robin Red and his search for Spring. With that in mind, I found myself being challenged to write a song of my own for Sunburst to play on the pentatonic flute: Robin Red. It's simple-- using only the notes A, B, and D. But simple is key, I think. It met her where she was, connected to her heart, and took her playing up a notch.

She struggled with it for a couple of weeks, but after her experience meeting a Native American flute player, she returned to this song with renewed vigor and quickly mastered it. Her own musical confidence grew by leaps and bounds with this song, as if she's now swiftly flying along, too.