Very Short Song/Story Time - Use & Reuse the Moment

A long rainy day here today. My cold kept LP & I indoors since I wasn't up for puddle jumping so it was art, art, art all morning long. By lunch I was out of coffee, tired of setting up and cleaning up projects and feeling pretty blah.

During lunch, LP requested (or demanded) "sing a song, sing a song, sing a song." After brief riffs on some of her favorite songs which were all met with a head shake of "no" with a grin and repeat of "sing a song," I finally caught on and started making up songs.

Most were very short story-songs...LP told me who the song was about ("a frog") and I filled in a bit (mostly rhyming to amuse us...as you might guess that frog lived in a log in a bog) and then repeated it a few times and ended it.

And immediately LP said "sing a song!"

Since my throat was pretty scratchy, these turned into more of talking-songs or talking in rhythm songs. All very short and all repeated. (If you want to warm up into making up songs, use a familiar song and change one element...instead of the itsy bitsy spider, have the teeney tiny caterpillar and see what happens).

The final lunchtime speaking-song was a about a...balloon (LP says) which was the color blue (LP's contribution) which I took out of my pocket and blew (I held up my hands and blew expanding my hands each time with a loud pffffffffff exhale) and blew and blew. I repeated the blowing 3 times and then mimed tying the balloon and letting it float up to the ceiling and ended with "...and now I have a big, blue, balloooooooooooon!" We did the blue balloon 3 or 4 times and then a couple times with the red. LP clearly enjoyed the exaggerated blowing up the balloon acting out so each time it was a little bigger.

So while we told a few different kinds of stories and songs during lunch, when we found one that engaged LP, it had staying power.