Hi everyone, I'm not exactly teaching, I just started going in on birthdays, or when I could, to read stories, do some songs. So the ages keep changing, sometimes too quick. Any tips how to stop that?

They're presently 6 and 8, and go to M.L. King Elementary in Louisville, a magnet for performing arts, and for Gifted--a double magnet. I haven't tried what a compass does in there, might spin. But when they started there I knew I'd have to get better--at a previous school I went in and the kids listened, here they stood up dancing, chiming in with harmonies on The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Yikes. The school is all the way to the west end, which in Louisville is generally black, and it's sort of inner-city, for Louisville, at least. Many people where I live seem not to know of it or not to consider it.

The comments about minor keys and happied-up music are interesting, because one of the things that got me interested in re-writing lyrics was that I thought the kids responded to the mood of a tune readily, but I didn't find a lot of lyrics that seemed to fit topics of importance to kids to the deeper moods and feelings. Maybe that's why The Juniper Tree strikes me so strongly--as I take it to be about a young girl saddened to see her older sister grow toward marriage, but putting a brave face on it. It kills me. Not that I've done anything remotely as good, mostly I do jokey things, get ideas from my kids.

Nobody enjoys personification (or animism?) more than my little boy, for example, so I'm thinking of doing Dear Prudence as a song about a Pet Kiwi. (They don't live long in captivity, sadly.)

Susan I'm sorry I haven't got back to you on Menc, but I haven't found my # yet. My kids used to do Kindermusic classes, and that may be something to look into also, though it's a bit programatic, we had one teacher who approached it more with her own spin than some others did. I know very much what you mean about the professionalisation of approaches--my wife is involved in arts education research. It's sometimes very frustrating, even horrifying for her as an artist (dance & drama), to see ideas lose their whole intention in the process of being formulated and defined. One can only hope that the teachers who wind up using it take it as a filing system of ideas, and don't let the mere intellectual armature take over the real process.