Children’s musicians Erin Lee and Marci bring us the next of their regular posts with thematic recommendations for kid-friendly music, plus activities to make the songs an interactive experience for the whole family. Look for Erin Lee and Marci here on the first Monday of each month, or visit their homepage, www.gottaplay.org.
I’ve created links to Amazon for the full albums (click the album image or name), plus links to iTunes for those who want only the singles.
It’s March, and for many of us that means: March Break! No school! We know lots of families that will be spending the break traveling, and we are traveling too – we’ll be rocking our way to Mexico with R Family Vacations. So we thought that this month we’d recommend some of our favorite traveling songs. Whether you’re heading to Mexico, Grandma’s, or just the grocery store, here are some transportation tunes to hum when the going gets rough — because every traveler knows that even the best laid travel plans go awry!
“A Long Way Home” (Tom Chapin, Family Tree
This is the BEST excuse we’ve ever heard for being late for dinner! If it wasn’t for that pesky school bus/submarine/jet/parachute/horse, our narrator surely would have arrived home from school in a prompt, responsible manner. Darn.
(No iTunes.)
“Hang On, Henry!” (Steve Blunt, Hang On, Henry! (No Amazon listing; link to artist’s site))
This is the suspenseful, yet infectiously cheery tale of Henry, who, when flying kites with his brother one day, holds on tight to the kite string and flies off. Technically, this isn’t really about travel plans going awry — more of a case of sudden, unexpected travel! But it makes us laugh, so we’re recommending it to you.
And our song for March?
“A View from the Backseat” (Erin Lee & Marci, Snowdance
It’s hard when you are nine going on 29 and your family insists on doing everything together — including the weekly car trip to an unnamed place (which remains unnamed at the behest of Erin Lee’s loved ones!) It’s even harder when you get stuck in traffic, which means you idle so long you run out of gas, which means you have to ride in a tow truck, which means . . . wait a minute . . . tow trucks are cool!
Here’s an activity to get this song off the iPod and into daily life:
Plan a trip! It can be a trip to your best friend’s house, or a trip to Disneyland. Get out the maps (or go to Mapquest) and learn how to read one — not so common a skill these days with the ubiquitous GPS! Plot out the route, and how it might be different if you traveled by train rather than a car…or a horse rather than a train . . . or . . . .