Songs & Stretches
Cultural literacy and music go hand in hand in a child's life-long education. The Wheels on the Bus, Down by the Station, If You're Happy and You Know It - are all songs from our common cultural heritage and sense of place in a community. Children's songs are anything but simple!
Music, along with dancing and singing, are precursors to reading. Rhythm and cadence, syllables in a beat - are skill sets for deciphering words, memorization and phonological discernment with letters and their sounds.
Stretches like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, help with a child's gross motor movement and development, as well as teaching a child about their body (the parts to name, the feel of movement and answering the desire to move).
Stretches
Featured: Songs From America
Pre-Literacy Tip:
Songs Americana -
History & Culture to Share with Your Child
You Are My Sunshine
This is now a classic song to sing to your little loved one - because they are our very own sun shining!
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are grey.
You'll never know dear, how much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.
Song history: did you know this was first a song about lost love? It was copyrighted by Paul Rice in 1937. However, the family of musician, Oliver Hood, have claimed that Hood actually wrote the song. In 1939, Rice sold the rights to the song to Charlie Mitchell and Jimmie Davis.
Little Red Caboose
By DeLoyce (Deke) White Moffitt in 1940
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Little red caboose, chug, chug, chug.
(Fists at shoulder level, alternate shoulders
on the "chug, chug, chug")
Little red caboose, chug, chug, chug.
(Repeat "chug" motions)
Little red caboose behind the train,
train, train, train.
(Point thumb back over your shoulder)
Smoke stack on his
back, back, back, back.
(Repeat "chug" motions)
Comin' around the
track, track, track, track.
(Repeat "chug" motions)
Little red caboose behind the train,
CHOO, CHOO!
(Pull down, like pulling a whistle chain)
If You're a Frog and You Know It
To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It."
If you're a frog and you know it, jump up and down
If you're a frog and you know it, jump up and down
If you're a frog and you know it, and you really want to show it,
If you're a frog and you know it, jump up and down.
Additional verses/movements:
*Catch a fly (clap hands together)
*Hop in your seat (hop, hop)
*Say "ribbit"