Thanks everyone, and I'm honored by the presence of Gargoyle, in full-dress italics!

Wilco48, I do the canon also, or at least a bit of it, as a 'listening game' to get them settled and listening early on. I tell them I'll play a slow part, then a quicker part with it, and when I do the quicker bit, raise hands if you still hear the slow part in it.

Yes, Susan, I do have an autoharp, but haven't taken it yet--I'm not too good at the crowd control thing and worry there's not time to let enough of them play with it. I have a few wee-sings. I'll have to check into the Singing Kettles, Jeanie.

Gargoyle makes a good point, and defensively, I do a few things, and could expand in that direction--the Juniper tree is one of my favorites, I think Peggy Seeger does it on their tape for kids. I like it generally, not just for kids, everything about it is genuine and timeless. A version of the Ash Grove said a lot to me as a kid--struck me with a kind of prescient nostalgia as my little classmates and I sang the wistful lines about "the friends of my childhood." There was a song called "little birdie" my dad's friends did, but it seems to have been their own version, and I only remember a piece of it. I've thought about trying a round with "i've been to Bristol, I've been to Dover, etc" and I also like the Coming of the May-o, but lyrics about how their fathers are cuckolds and they will be too might get me in over my head. But really, I just like messing with some pop and rock things, I like the feel, and well, so it goes.

It's a good point, but not my humble, bumbling thing, and the other side of the coin is that those trad songs were new once, and what we know of some of them today might merely be a variation of the irreverent variation some bonehead like me did of a song that didn't last. Thanks yall.