Move & Groove: take a song home!

I’ve had a few questions about the Goodbye Rap that we do at the end of Move & Groove every week.  It’s a very fun rhyme to practice at home.  During the class, we say this rhyme as an echo (I say the line with the action, then everyone else repeats it), but you can say it at home however you like.

There are many many variations of this rhyme, and you can find a lot of different lines to add if you go to Google “see you later alligator poem”.  That said, here’s what we do in Move & Groove:

See you later, alligator (chomp with alligator arms)
Bye, bye, butterfly (make butterfly hands)
Be sweet, parakeet (bird beak with your hand)
Blow a kiss, jellyfish (blow a kiss)
See you soon, raccoon (hands make circles around eyes)
Toodle-oo, kangaroo (hop in place)
Time to go, buffalo (stamp your feet)
Hasta mañana, iguana (wave hand)
And “Bye” said the fly. (wiggle pointer finger, use a squeaky voice)

Have fun!

Why Music?

A few months ago, I started a music and movement program at the Saugus Public Library.  It’s a great chance for very young children to wiggle, dance, and sing away all those excess oodles of energy.  The Saugus Advertiser generously featured Move & Groove in their 5/19 issue.  You can see all of the movement going on in the class–it’s awesome!

Movement is great.  It’s vital to the way we live and interact with each other.  It would be so easy to create a movement class structured through spoken commands (and there are plenty of instructions given verbally in our class!).  So why include music?

Babies will instinctively respond to music (watch the bouncing and kicking begin when you turn on a song with a good beat), but music also requires us to learn new skills.  Just like storytime crafts give young children a chance to develop their fine motor skills and artistic panache, Move & Groove lets kids explore rhythm and sound.  We can practice matching pitch in a song or keeping the beat with rhythm sticks.

Here’s my guiding philosophy: everyone can make music.  Everyone.  Some people are more rhythmic, more tuneful, or more pleasing to the ear … but everyone can make music.  Sadly, a lot of people don’t make any music because they think that they’re not good enough (or worse, because they’ve been told that they’re not good enough).

We spend a lot of time in our lives listening to professional musicians.  The radio pipes them to us 24/7.  CDs, iTunes, and mp3 players give us our own personal soundtracks.  As we listen, we start to compare ourselves to them.  Most of us don’t sound good enough to be on a CD, and some of us stop singing or playing instruments all together.

Move & Groove is a chance to break out of that cycle of comparison.  There’s a reason why I ask adults to be full participants in the class!  You are the children’s greatest role models, and you have the chance to show them that music doesn’t only come from the stereo.  Whether you’ve sung arias at the Met or can barely hold a tune in the shower, you’re good enough for Move & Groove.  Take the opportunity to teach your children that they’re good enough, too.

It’s time for a sing-along!

Sing away the dreary winter blues with a sing-along at the library. Local musician, Peter Sheridan, is well known for his fun, energetic sing-alongs, and he’ll be here at the Saugus Public Library this Saturday, Jan. 29th, at 10am. (Corrected 1/27/11: the program is at 10am!)

It’ll be a lot of fun for all ages–especially young children!

The holidays are almost here!

Christmas is only a few days away, and the library will be closing a little early on Friday so that we can all be with our families for the holiday.  Not to worry!  We’ll be right back on Monday morning for all of our favorite programs during the week.

In addition to our regular Lego time on Monday (4pm), our toddler story time and preschool story time on Tuesday (10:30am, 11:30am), and a special visit from Miss Merry the READ Dog on Wednesday (3pm), we’re going to have a super-exciting, super-free concert with the fantastic Roger Tincknell on Wednesday, December 29th, at 4pm. I can’t wait to see you all there!  It’s open to everyone: you don’t have to live in Saugus to share the fun time.

Here’s Roger’s description of the concert:

“This seasonal celebration emphasizes the commonality of many cultures. Songs of light and traditional stories from around the world tell how different people have come together to celebrate the longest night of the year. The program also tells stories and legends about how people once feared that the sun was never going to return! The program includes familiar songs from the Chanukah, Christmas and other holiday traditions from Asia, Russia and Latin America. Traditional winter sing-a-longs and variety of seasonal songs bring warmth and good humor to all ages.  Kids even get to create a giant snow storm, shovel lots of snow and bring on a snow day all in a song!”

Want to learn more about Roger?  Visit his website!