My dog has fleas?

One of my favorite “starter” xylophones songs is “I’ve Got a Dog,” using some of the suggestions in Diane Lange’s Together in Harmony. 

I’ve got a dog as thin as a rail

He’s got fleas all over his tail.

Every time his tail goes flop

The fleas on the bottom all hop to the top (stop!)

One bug, two bug, three bugs, four

Five bugs, six bugs, seven bugs, more

Eight bugs, nine bugs, oh my, ten!

Go back to the beginning and do it again!

After assuring the kids that my own dogs get monthly flea preventative, we learn several ostinati (repeated patterns) that fit with the song. The xylophones are set up with just five bars to make part of a minor scale—D, E, F, G, A. We make big, small, and giant beats (also know as macro/microbeats or quarter, eighth, half notes), learn about minor chords, and practice stepping up and down the xylophone bars with correct technique. 

3rd and 4th graders love this as a re-introduction to xylophones, too, as long as I acknowledge it’s a “little kid” song, heh! Many of them are also learning the D minor chord on ukulele right now, so they can make that connection and play together.

My kid’s service dog Tonks, cleverly disguised as a fire truck

Go in Peace and a Thanksgiving Song

Over the years, I’ve written quite a few songs to use with students, from silly to serious. I’d like to share two that have become part of our school traditions, and you are welcome to use them for your own purposes!

I wrote the first, “Go in Peace,” to be sung at the end of our Lower School Meeting for Worship. Our school is a Friends school, and Meeting for Worship--we retain the name from Quakerism, but it is not presented as a religious practice--is an important time of holding the silence and students speaking up as they feel led to respond to that week’s query. When I started teaching at CFS, we then asked the students to leave the gathering room in silence so we didn’t go straight from peace to chaos. Our children mostly do a wonderful job respecting the silence during Meeting, but once they pop up they are ready to make some noise! I was asked to find a song, but none of them seemed to quite fit our school—they were either too silly, too complicated, or too religous. Writing my own was the natural solution! Here are the words to my “Go in Peace,” and the sheet music is below.

Go in peace, go in peace

With this blessing in your heart

May your light shine brightly wherever you are.

Go in peace, go in peace

May this silence teach us grace

To help each other make the world a better place.

A lifelong Quaker friend and colleague has taught this song at Quaker conferences and in meetinghouses around the country, and I have heard that this song is now being used in multiple Friends schools!

Another song I wrote early in my career at CFS is a Thanksgiving round. I really wanted to have something to teach the kids to sing for Thanksgiving, but in this case all the songs were either about turkey, religion, or told a whitewashed story about pilgrims. Here’s my simple round, sheet music also included below:

For the blessings of the earth

For the gifts of love and friendship

For the beauty of life

We give thanks, we give thanks