Alphabeticians: New Album

This week on music Friday I am letting you all know about the new album by the Alphabeticians, Junior. We attended their CD release party last weekend and the kids really enjoyed it. Not only did play play fun rock style kids music but they had a women who was making balloon animals who was amazing, and a great bubble machine.

                                                                  


If you like rock music I would suggest that you check this album out. Also if you live in the Portland area the Alphabeticians are going to be performing a lot over the summer including a free event at the New Seasons up in Vancouver, WA June 23 from 2-3. You should check out their full schedule here.

Music Friday: Dance for the Sun

                                                                     

I recently heard a song off of this album called Let's Go to Work that is sung from the point of view of a child who wants to go to work with their parent. It is a really neat song with a nice calming but upbeat female voice and deep beats from a male voice. I didn't realize until I went searching around for more from the person who wrote it that it was a cd created for doing yoga with children. The neat thing about this album is that it has each set of songs twice, once on their own and a second time with the women talking to a class of kids telling them how to do the yoga.

That part of it would be much neater if it were a video instruction but I still think it is neat if you are a parent who already does some yoga and can help by showing the child while listening to the music.

I personally love yoga but have not been very good about doing it since I had children. While I was in school working on getting my Doctorate in Psychology I was doing yoga about two times a week and I noticed that even with only that much I felt so much better, my arms were very toned, my felt better emotionally after doing the yoga, and slept better at night. Now I still do sun salutations but the rest kind of gets left by the wayside without a formal class. I do notice that it helps me a great deal when I run to stop and do a set of sun salutations if I am out of breath. It makes me focus on my breath and regulate it.

Yoga is not just beneficial for adults but for children and teens also, both of my kids know the sun salutation routine at least in part but this cd is a good reminder that we should start adding this into our daily routine. Now I have a great way to add some child friendly fun to it!

Do you do yoga or meditation? Do you do yoga with your kids or do you think you will?

Music Friday: Pizza, The Best of Gemini

During the week I like to listen to music on Pandora to discover new music that is similar to other types of music I already know I like. One of the songs that came up a few weeks ago was Pizza by Gemini. 

                                          
 

This is a really silly and fun song about the joy of pizza. It has a really danceable melody and is totally sing along friendly. To go along with this pizza song I thought I would share a pizza book and cooking project to do with kids. 

                                        


I read this book with my son and daughter after having spotted it while browsing the library shelves. I had scanned through it in the library and discovered that there was a recipe at the end for the pizza dough and the kind of pizza in the story. 


My son and daughter enjoy working in the kitchen with me and we have a few kids cookbooks but I love how I was able to read the story and do a project with the kids related to the story. 

We changed the recipe a bit because my son does not like tomatoes and really really wanted to put pepperoni on the pizza (he had just made pizza in preschool a few weeks before and felt that pepperoni was a necessity). I just put all the ingredients out and we each got a section of pizza to create. 

The other change that I made was that I used whole wheat flour and a little extra wet ingredient to make up for that. :)

I served the pizza with a strawberry, pinenut, spinach, and mozzarella salad. 

Verdict: my son declared this was the best pizza he had EVER had. 


My daughter liked it too.
 

Oh and two weeks ago I had a give away for the Music Friday music and Stephanie was the winner. 


Have a good weekend!

Music Friday: Sing Along With Putumayo

 Today's song is from the album Sing Along With Putumayo, it is called Man Gave Names to All the Animals.

                                                  
The Putumayo series is a great series of albums with songs from all around the world. The song Man Gave Names to All the Animals has really great sound to it that makes it get stuck in your head (believe me it has been stuck in mine for the last 18 hours). 


Also remember that you can win last weeks Music Friday album by commenting on the post from last week. 

I hope you have a great weekend with lots of dancing and singing. 

Music Friday: Little Liza Jane

                                    

Today's music Friday song is Little Liza Jane a version by Elizabeth Mitchell. This is a great children's song with a wonderful rhythm. We also have a lot of fun singing and dancing to this song with a tambourine or bells. 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
 

Music Friday: African Playground

Is it really already this time of the week again? Man this last week has flown by. We had snow yesterday, March 1st by the way, what is that about? Really this is not the time of year that we normally have snow and I am so ready for spring that it really did not make me all that happy. Plus I was just kind of in a funk. But I digress...time to get out of the funk and into some fun very danceable music for kids. 

Today's pick is African Playground which is put out by Putumayo Kids. We have been enjoy this music for many years now after receiving it as a gift from some of my Mom's friends. I had the pleasure of visiting Africa in the fall of 2001 with my college Lewis & Clark College. It was a great experience and I was able to learn some Swahili while I was there. I learned just enough to try and teach my kids some of the basics like hello, the numbers, and a couple of phrases (I actually knew more at one point but don't retain languages very well). There are only a couple of songs on this album in Swahili but it is fun for all of us to sing with them. 

All of the music on the cd is is a lot of fun. It is neat to tell the kids about where each song is from and point it out on the map (my older one more than the younger). 

I think that music is one of the best ways to be introduced to new cultures because it is easy to translate to our life. This cd is a very upbeat, fun, collection of songs that are very easy to move to. I love this cd almost as much as the kids do or maybe even more.

                                       

What is your favorite music from another country? 

What is your favorite dance music?

Oh and make sure to check back next week, I have a great Music Friday planned! Hint, you could get it free!

Music Friday: Hap Palmer

When we go to the library they always have shakers and bells and do songs where there are a lot of pauses in the music. During that time you are supposed to stop moving and shaking your instruments and then start again when the music starts. 


I don't know why but I love this. My kids enjoy it too so I decided to try and find the song they have at the library. It didn't work out too well. That's okay though because I found some other songs that are just as great! The cd is Rhythms on Parade by Hap Palmer.
                                      
I buy my songs on iTunes since I have an iPod Touch that I can play them on so I actually only purchased one of the songs off of this album at first but then decided to go back and purchase more of them. These songs are perfect dancing songs. They are a little bit country and a little swing. There is a fun one on the cd that talks about different sounds in our world. You could easily point these sounds out later and make observations about other sounds you hear around you. 


These songs help with learning about opposites (talk with your kids about starting and stopping and how these are opposites), rhythm, music, and if you are dancing with them and playing instruments like bells it can help with large motor development. 

Music Saves The Day! Or at Least the Afternoon

Today when we were having a bad moment I turned on the music and I started dancing. Yep that's right, me. I started singing, clapping my hands, and spinning my little girl. She was smiling in no time, my son was quickly joining in and wanted me to dance with him and soon they were lining up to take turns dancing with me while we all sang with the music. The point of this is that I realized that music has some magical powers to it and because it is so important to our life I wanted to share that with you. 

Music in my family has always been important. My Father was the lead singer and guitarist in the band Wooden Music from before I was born until I was in college and my Mom played flute in the same group for many years. I got the chance to sing with my Dad in the band from time to time and played clarinet through high school, even getting the chance to go compete with the high school band in Hawaii in an international contest (which we won, yay). 

These musical roots have made music such an important part of my life and I really hope to give my children a piece of that. I wish that I were as musically talented as my parents and could be playing music around my children all the time but instead I get to try and instill the love of music to them through listening, singing,  and my favorite part, dancing to it. 

Music is such a wonderful thing to have around children. It can help with learning vocabulary, emotions, motor skills (dancing or playing music), learning about similarities and differences, pitch and rhythm, and many reports have suggested that there is an academic boost in many different areas to children who are actively involved in music.  

There are so many great things about music. Here are some ideas for adding music to your day. But first some fun photos of my son dancing :)

Okay adding music to your day...

-Wake up to music. In our family we play background music in the morning. Usually this is something that is quietly playing in the background while I make breakfast and is somewhat calm. 

-Have a daily music time with musical instruments like tambourines, shakers, and recorders. Don't forget dancing! 

-Sing songs frequently. Some we like are:

        *Teeth-brushing song

        *We're on our Way to Grandpa's Farm, a song done by Raffi

        (when we are going somewhere, we change the words to match

        what we are doing)

         *clean up song

         *good night song

         *1 Little 2 Little (with many variations)

         *and we love to make up extremely goofy rhyming songs. 

The  point being we add songs in whenever we can to our day. 

-We add quite music at lunch time/rest time. Usually quietly playing in the background something calming. 

-Adding songs that are useful and help with learning task specific behaviors is a nice way to give your child a behavior que. Examples: This is the way we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash our hands, this is the way we wash our hands, after we use the restroom. Another one is: Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up clean up everybody do your share. 

-When someone is having a bad moment you can use calm music or fun/funny music to try and help them calm down or change direction emotionally. 

Music is so important to us that I would like to share it with you every Friday, or at least that is my plan. I am going to share with you a song or artist that our family enjoys listening and dancing to. I will probably share "adult" music as well as children's from time to time. So I hope that you will check back to see what new tunes our family likes AND please tell me your favorites too! I plan to file them all on a page titled Music To Dance To.

If I could share Wooden Music with you that is what I would do but since I can't (no mp3s of them) I will share my daughter's favorite song right now which is We Are the Dinosaurs by Laurie Berkner. 

                                         

This is a fun song that we first heard at library story time. We like to march along to the tune and "eat" using the sign language sign for eat. Then we "sleep" in our nest using the sign for sleep. Of course don't forget the roar at the end. I have to warn you this one gets stuck in my head. 

                                       

I would love to hear about how you use music in your day and what some of your favorite children's musicians are.