You can listen to The Mystery of Nate and the Skate at www.songwritingforkids.com.
A few of my favorite moments:
- When we learned Oh Susanna, I asked the kids what they thought it meant when the songwriter wrote contradictory lines like, "The sun so hot, I froze to death." One little girl said she thought he was just trying to cheer Susanna up by making her laugh. I thought that was just about right on.
- The first version of the class song had present tense and past tense all mixed together. I have to admit, I didn't know if the kids would be able to understand tenses enough to be able to fix it. Boy, was I wrong! All I said was something along the lines of, "It looks like sometimes Nate did something in the past and sometimes, it looks like he's doing it right now...does that make sense?" And they zipped through the entire song, replacing "is" with "was" and "don't" with "didn't." I was blown away.
- I loved the concentration and detail they put into their song, throwing out their ideas with abandon, but choosing their words carefully. For instance, all on their own, the group had a short discussion about how the phrase magical belt is more musical and has better flow than magic belt.
- Polka-dot, polka-dot, polka-dot underwear. Need I say more?