Music Tip #33 Wow, Music Works!

“Now I’m going to run along and skip along the way.”
“Wait for me, I’m coming too, I also want to play.”

Those are the opening lines to a song that comes from the music, “Children’s March, Over the Hills and Far Away” by Percy Grainger. I taught it to a preschool music class and the children enjoyed using their pointer fingers on each hand to represent the two children in the song as they “ran and skipped along the way”. The moms and I sang the words as the children wiggled and skipped their fingers in the air.

A few weeks later, one of the moms told me she had been trying to get her 3 year old daughter and newborn son in the car but wasn’t having much success. Finally the mom walked towards the car with the baby and started singing “Now I’m going to run along and skip along the way”. Immediately her daughter came running and sang “wait for me, I’m coming too, I also want to play.” The mom and daughter sang the whole song in the car as they drove, the mom being utterly astonished because she didn’t know her daughter had even remembered the song. The mom quickly taught her husband the words and melody so he, too, could use this newly discovered method of getting their stubborn daughter in the car!

Yeah, for the power and influence music has! We need to use music to our advantage. It can calm, distract, engage, encourage, excite, relax, and revitalize us. Use fast music while your family cleans the house. Sing Sesame Street’s “Rubber Ducky” during bath time. Use soothing music while homework is being done. And of course sing lullabies and favorite songs during the bedtime ritual.

[words/movements to song in Kids Can Listen, Kids Can Move by Lynn Kleiner http://www.musicrhapsody.com/books.php4#tb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuSXAP1ABAM
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=children%27s+march+over+the+hills&x=0&y=0