Head, Shoulders, Knees, and all that

Golden Week

Golden Week in Japan, a week in which several holidays are clustered together resulting in a week off for many, kicks off today with Greenery Day.  Other Golden Week holidays are Constitution Day and Children's Day.

It's a bit crazy during holiday weeks in Japan...a bit like Thanksgiving weekend in the US.  Everybody is traveling.  Tokyo is an interesting place to be during the holidays because this very busy city suddenly loses like half its population.  Many Tokyoites aren't from Tokyo, so many go back to their hometowns over the holidays.  And many of those whose hometown is Tokyo  head off somewhere else for a quick vacation. 

I will be enjoying the relative peace and quiet in Tokyo during Golden Week, but I'll be on vacation from the internet.  So, see you soon.  Have a happy Golden Week!

Patience

Emiko was the quiet, shy one...until she wasn't anymore.  Makoto was the mama's boy who shed tears regularly...until he didn't anymore.  Mari was the girl who couldn't sit still for more than 10 seconds at a time...and now she is the calming influence in class.

Everybody changes, obviously.  But with young children, these "changes" can be quite dramatic.  The confidence gained from learning how to swim may suddenly spread from the pool to all areas of the child's life.  Starting kindergarten and spending more time with other kids, developments at home, new siblings, friends or relatives moving away...there are so many things that can trigger small and large personality shifts.  And those are just the relatively big issues.

As caretakers and educators, we need to be a steady, supportive presence throughout these "changes".   Give children time to develop and be thankful you have the opportunity to witness it.

Interviews with Children's Musicians

Fran Grauman from About.com has been posting some great interviews with kids' musicians recently.  She has talked with Charity Kahn, Yosi, Red Grammer, Jim Gill, and her most recent interview is with Laurie Monopoli from the Learning Station, who had the following great advice:

Sing, sing, and sing some more to your children! Sing about the weather, hum a tune in the car, whistle a few bars shopping or make up a song all about your child (children love hearing their name in a song). Even if you can’t carry a tune, as long as the song comes from your heart it will be received by a child like the sweet, beautiful sound of a nightingale.

Indeed.

Densha moment

Listeners to National Public Radio in the US coined the phrase Driveway Moment to refer to those times when you are listening to an engrossing story on the radio, arrive at your destination, and rather than turn off the radio, stay in your car and listen to the end of the story. 

In Japan, I experience Densha (train) Moments, when I'm so engrossed in a book I completely lose sense of time and space and end up going 3 stations past my stop before I snap to (nori-sugosu in Japanese.)  Yesterday, I had my first iPod Densha Moment, while listening to an NPR podcast nonetheless.

On my way home from work yesterday, I was listening to NPR's most e-mailed stories of the day podcast.  After a couple of interesting but unremarkable stories, on came a piece entitled called Out of Hiding, Into the World: Thembi's AIDS Diary that just floored me.  When it was over, I "came to" and realized I had missed my stop.  My eyes had been open, my nose wasn't in a book, I had just been so captured by the story that I lost sense of my surroundings.

This post has nothing to do with Kids' Music or Early Childhood Education.  But if you've got 23 minutes to spare, give it a listen.

The Disco Baby

Check out CJ Zeee staying alive...just might be the cutest thing ever, or the creepiest ...haven't made up my mind.  If you are looking for more on babies and disco (of course you are), check out Zooglobble.

London Bridge is...

...being replaced by a Wal-mart? What do you get when you ask Barry Louis Polisar (creator of such classic children's songs as I Use to Have a Sister, Sally Eats Shoelaces, Straw and String, Shut Up in the Library, Get Your Hand Off my Leg and Your Foot out of my Shoe, and My Name is Hiram Lipshlitz, among many, many, many others) to write a song for children about "The Laws of Commercial Zoning and/or Eminent Domain as They Impact the Small Business Model" to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down. See for yourself.

It's a humor piece, but also an interesting exercise that really gets at the essence of what a lot of good children's music/literature does...talk to children in a simple way about ideas that don't always seem so simple to talk about. You don't necessarily dumb down the idea, you just find a way to talk about it using references kids can relate to (I hope kids can still relate to Lemonade stands these days.) Dr. Suess, who had the same kind of wonderful imagination as Barry, was a master at this.

Barry's tune about commercial zoning ends up being a lot easier to follow than London Bridge is Falling Down, but unfortunately, it doesn't work as well as play song:-)

For me, other than being a slightly creepy song which I thankfully never really understood until I had grown up (same goes for Ring around the Rosie), the tune London Bridge reminds me of many visits to the famous bridge as a child, in Arizona! Looking at the bridge I always thought, "Looks okay to me"...a sentiment later expressed much better by the late great Elliot Smith who sang London bridge is safe and sound no matter what you keep repeating.

(Whoa...time to step away from the computer when opening an e-mail from Tanja about a cute humor piece in the Washington Post ends an hour later with me making tenous connections between Lake Havasu's London Bridge and Elliot Smith on a blog ostensibly about kids' music and early childhood ed.)

Nagi returns

One of the fun things about blogging has just been seeing how people come across the site.  A while back I posted an mp3 of one my students, Nagi, singing/rapping.  I called the post, "Best. Rapper. Ever."  To this day, I get at least three or four visits everyday from someone apparently looking to Google for the answer to that great debate...who is the best rapper ever?  Apparently the debate has taken off in the past couple of months.  After I put up that post a couple of months ago, I was on the first page of a google search for "best rapper ever"...now I come up on the third page

I always wish I could see the reaction of people who come to this site looking to find the best rapper ever, and I wonder how many actually listen to Nagi's "At School" rap, and where she ends up on their lists.

Anyhow, I had quite a few requests for more Nagi, but you know, I'm trying not to overexpose her...she just started kindergarten this week so she's got a pretty full schedule.  Here is the clip from when she was 2 that I referred to in my first Nagi post.

Nagi Freestyle - 2 years old

She didn't have much command of English at the time (or her mother tongue Japanese for that matter), but listen to her rap in English anyhow, mimicking the intonation.  You can make out "Clifford" and "Elmo" here and there.  And it's all freestyle, no editing.

Listen to her rhythm...Nagi has developed in to a really great reader, mostly on her own, and I'm pretty convinced that there is a connection between her sense of rhythm and her advanced reading abilities, one more reason to instill a love of music in young children. 

Related Posts: Be Yourself Best. Rapper. Ever.

The sincerest form of flattery

One of the truly great pleasures of teaching young children is hearing the stories from some of the parents about how the kids imitate you at home and pretend to be the teacher. Of course, they also imitate the Fed Ex guy, SpongeBob, and the dog across the street, but nonetheless, it feels good to know that the brief time we spend together in class (in my case, an hour a week), they are soaking it all in, and that I'm with them beyond the classroom.

Shannon-sensei has some thoughts on this over at teaching english to lil cuties (hat tip to Troy for sharing).

One of my favorite things is when my kids call the classroom Devon's house...they think I live there and never leave. I love the looks on their faces as they process that I live somewhere else and that I exist beyond the relationship that we share in the classroom.

More freeze dance

Troy has gone nuts over at songStreet and put up thousands of new posts since I last visited (okay, not thousands, but a lot.)  Lots of fun little tips for teachers and parents, including some more ideas for freeze dance.

Music for kids that even parents might love

NPR has an interview up with Stefan from Zooglobble on All Things Considered about the state of children's music. Great interview. If you are a parent or caretaker looking for some good children's music that you can enjoy together with your children, it all starts with a visit to Zooglobble, where Stefan writes some of the best kids'/familly music reviews out there.

The piece talks a bit about Dan Zanes and Laurie Berkner and Stefan's thoughts on some of his current favorites, Brady Rymer and Justin Roberts. All great artists, but if you want to have a better idea about whether or not they would suit your children or your family, check out the reviews at zooglobble. He does a great job painting a picture of the music so that adults without much exposure to kids' music will be able to have a pretty good idea whether or not it will be something their family can enjoy together.

If you prefer your entertainment in podcast form like me, Stefan's interview was NPR's most e-mailed story of the day, and is currently available on NPR's Most E-mailed Stories of the Day podcast for Saturday, 08 April 2006.