Rainy Day, Songs tell Stories

On this blessed day of rain, how about some music... about rain? or that have "rain" in the title?

Here goes a collection of rain themed songs for all ages and tastes... starting with songs for big kids, finishing off with songs for little kids and a lesson on the water cycle... ENJOY!


                                                           FOR THE BIG ONES

Rhythm of the Rain, The Cascades

Singing in the Rain, Gene Kelly

Into Each Life some Rain Must Fall, Ella Fitzgeraldand the Inkspots

Crying in The Rain, The Everly Brothers

Early Morning Rain, Gordon Lightfoot

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, B.J. Thomas

Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Creedence Clearwater Revival

It´s Raining Again, Supertramp

Here Comes the Rain Again, Eurythmics

November Rain, Guns N' Roses

It´s Raining Men, the Weather Girls

FOR THE LITTLE ONES

It´s Raining, It´s Pouring

Singing in The Rain, Kid´s Songs

Little Drops of Rain

Rain, Rain, Go Away

The Water Cycle, Mr. Davis

Have a Wonderful Rainy Day!!!!

Tapping into your Heritage

The definition of HERITAGE according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is:

the traditions, achievements, beliefs, etc., that are part of the history of a group or nation

Children who grow up learning about their heritage, grow up to be more self-assured.  They know who they are and where they came from and that in itself brings a feeling of security.  Historically, stories told orally have kept traditions alive.  Modern times, however and the rush of everyday life, have slowly been stripping these traditions away. So is the world a melting pot or a salad bowl? A melting pot allows traditions to melt into each other, individual flavours being lost and creating a new one.  A salad bowl respects the individual flavours of each tradition, while mixing together to create an explosion of flavours. It is important to adapt and integrate yourself into new situations, but it is equally important to maintain your own culture and traditions,  your heritage.  These combined circumstances define who you are.

Over the last couple of weeks, my daughter has been asking the names of her great and great-great grandparents, so we thought it was time to start working on our family geneology, making a simple family tree with our girls. We have a lot of information on our family thanks to my parents, who years ago started piecing our family tree together on www.geni.com. Geni is wonderful to build a complete tree. As a larger family we have managed to make and maintain contact with branches of our tree which were previously "lost". Another tool online site is  http://www.ancestry.com/


To help you get started with your research, here is a link that coincidentially just popped in from Good Housekeeping...   http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/travel/family-genealogy?src=spr_FBPAGE&spr_id=1443_60316788

However, with young children, you want to keep it simple.  Here are a couple of ideas that I´ve found around the net to help you get started.

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http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6171:my-family-tree-handout&catid=2171


This is a great site with different family tree templates:
http://genealogy.lovetoknow.com/Family_Tree_Template_for_Kids

Some ideas from Family Holiday.net www.familyholiday.net

Home decor family tree

my wonderful family

There are loads of other ideas online to help make a visual family tree for the children.

Making a family tree is a fun family project that is a visual tool for children to place themselves within a family.  While making your tree, talk about where family members currently live, where ancestors were born and moved to and why.  There is a very real possibility that they too may move around at some point or that family members or friends may move around, and knowing of others who have done it, makes it a natural part of life.

Celebrating your heritage everyday.

Make sure to include in your days things that celebrate your heritage.

• Keep in touch with family members in different places
• Cook traditional meals, 
• listen to traditional music  
• read and tell stories, nursery rhymes
• speak the language
• celebrate holidays
• teach basic history and geography, have them recognize the flag

In short, keep it alive, make it real and make it fun!

Making Time for Stories

Listening to stories is an essential aspect of learning. It improves language and critical thinking skills, oral communication, attention span, and promotes understanding of sequence, concepts, role characteristics, feelings and human nature. It also has an effect on the ability to cooperate and follow instructions, besides being a pleasurable activity for both the teller and the listener. Here you will find articles, tips, story and extension activity suggestions to help you along the way.  

Unfotunately, in the structure of school and among all the curricular demands, very little time, if any, is dedicated to pleasurable reading and storytelling.  As a teacher, who have taken a leave to raise my children, I have sadly observed that children are not exposed to stories at school with the frequency I would like. In defense of teachers, I also know that the curricular demands leave little space for pleasurable reading or stories.  My six year old only goes to the library once every two weeks.  Yeah, I guess that is better than nothing, but it is not enough.  As parents, though, this is a place where we can easily jump in.  

At home, if we make the time, we can channel into this important aspect of learning.  The love of reading comes from the love of stories; listening to family stories and family history; reading for pleasure;  reading about what one likes; allowing ones´ imagination to let loose and make connections. Stories are all around us, waiting to be told.  Pick up a book to read aloud or create one from scratch, but tell your children stories everyday.  Incorporate it into different parts of your routine. Below is a picture of our Teatime storytime pic-nic that was so thoroughly enjoyable that we had to refill the teapot a couple of times. 

  

Anyway, all that being said, this is a place where I hope to put to use both my teacher and my parent skills.  One aspect I hope to explore is reading and stories.  The other is bilingualism.  But we´ll get into that in another post. Thanks for stopping by.