Sing With Our Kids

Local musician Nancy Stewart is working on "a pilot project for early learning through community singing." The official website will go live in September 2012, but for now, you can check out placeholder site and get an idea of the scope of this exciting, ambitious project:

Sing With Our Kids

My daughter became smitten with Nancy and her music in the summer of 2005. In that summer, I took my toddler girl to five Nancy concerts! I also took guitar lessons from Nancy that autumn. Nancy's main website has been a great resource with its free Song of the Month feature, and I'm excited now to see that Nancy plans to expand that enthusiasm for early music education.

Autumn Song: Swinging Along the Open Road

Angelina, this blog's most faithful reader, asked me if I had any good fall/autumn songs to share. Michaelmas is done, and Martinmas is not yet here, but how can I resist a request? I have not yet learned by heart the round Swinging Along the Open Road, but I am planning on it. My daughter has a knack for singing rounds without getting tangled up in the melodies, so I'll be working on it with her. I found a YouTube recording of the song, which you may listen to here.

These are the lyrics:
Swinging along the open road
Swing along under a sky that's clear
Swinging along the open road
All in the fall, in the fall of the year.

Swinging along the open road
All in the fall of the year.
Swinging along the open road
Under a sky that's clear
Swing along the open road
In the fall of the year.
Swinging along, swinging along
Swinging along the open road
All in the fall of the year.

This song is a bit more sophisticated than many folk songs I can easily strum on the guitar. I'm no musicologist, but I think there are a couple of flats in the tune that give it a bit of extra zest. For the visual, here's a picture of autumn-themed dolls I made in 2010. I'm pretending that they're gathering around the bonfire after their brisk walk). The bonfire flames came from MamaKopp, and the trees came from The Enchanted Cupboard. I'm planning on making another guitarist and lantern-walker before too long.

Marie in the Garden

At long last, here is a song for spring! The song is called "Marie in the Garden" and it accompanies a simple game. A Waldorf kindergarten teacher taught it to me several years ago after I gave her one of my early creations. In the game, all the children close their eyes while the leader sings,

Marie in the garden,
The garden, Marie.
She is as tiny as she can be.
Marie in the garden,
The garden, Marie.
Open your eyes and where is she?

In the meantime, the teacher has hidden the doll in a pocket or somewhere nearby. The children have to guess where the little doll is.

I made a Marie in the Garden doll for my shop, and asked my daughter to sing the song for your use. Here is the song on video:

Lantern Walk Songs 2010

For those of you coming to this blog for the first time, you can find all of my posted Lantern Walk songs here. For those of you who are waiting for new songs, I'm touched that you still return. If you let me know what kinds of songs you're looking for, I will seek them out. If they're fine for the public domain, I'll post simple recordings as I can.

May Day Song Regrets

I had hoped to have had some songs for you for May. However, Life took over! I may yet be able to post some melodies soon for May Day, which you can store away for next year.

We Are Three Wandering Travelers

"We Are Three Wandering Travelers" is a circle game song that my daughter really enjoyed in her kindergarten class last winter. The group forms a circle. Three children “travel” outside of the circle, walking around it as everyone sings:

We are three wandering travelers
Out in the wind and the rain
We saw your light, shining so bright,
Tapped on your window pane, saying,
“Let us come in, let us come in,
Into your house we pray.
Let us come in, let us come in,
Please do not turn us away.”

Children in the circle respond with an emphatic, "No!"

The song is sung two more times. The second time, the circle responds with "No!" but on the third time, they respond with “Yes!”

The three children enter the circle. Everyone sings:

You may come in, you may come in,
Into our house today.*
You may come in, you may come in,
We will not turn you away.
YES!"

Here is the tune, which, when my daughter heard it, said, "You're singing too low!" I can hear the beginnings of a cold lurking in my voice, which probably had something to do with the low pitch.

*I sang "we pray" instead of "today."

Santa Lucia (Saint Lucy) Song

The Parenting Passageway has a good post on the December 13 festival of Saint Lucy/Santa Lucia called Santa Lucia Day in the Waldorf Home. In the post is an embedded link to the Swedish Santa Lucia song as well as a link to lyrics translated by Mama Lisa's World.

In my daughter's school, the song has been simplified to these few lines:

Now in the darkest night
Enter with candlelight
Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia!

For this blog, I sang the song twice on video: