Tag Archives: Earth Day

Earth Week: {Go Green – Text Revision}

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Creating something always takes time and rethinking.

As my students and I were singing the Go Green! song, a question about lyrics was raised. We were thinking and seeing if these words made sense:

G…O…G.R.E.E.N.
vs 1
Help each other to make a difference
Here at ___________ (insert your school name here) School
How do we do it over here?
Recycle cans, bottles, and paper
Turn off lights when we’re leaving
Do the same thing chez nous…

We thought the first verse was pretty good, except the last line. We changed it to:

Installing solar panels would be cool!

The second verse was the real challenge. Our initial thought was to make “a comprehensive list” of green actions, but a teacher suggested that the lyrics could be organized better.

Here is the original version:

Try to help the earth by biking
to the local grocery stores
Reuse bags – say, “No!” to plastic
Save gas and carpool together,
Heat the house with solar panels
Turn off engines & grow trees in your yard.

Here is the newer version as of now:

vs 2
Turn off engines in your car
Try to help the earth by biking
to the local grocery stores
Reuse bags – say, “No!” to plastic
Save gas and carpool together,
We recommend you buy a hybrid car
chorus
Go Green, go green, go green oh-o-o-o (2x) Go Green!

What do you think about this newer version?

If you need to listen to the original song – go here!

Vege-A-Orchestra: Phase 1

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Happy Earth Week, all!

Check out these wonderful vegetable instruments! Perfect for my music classes to experiment….{Unless you understand Japanese, you will not understand what he says. Good thing there’s a translated speech bubble!}:

This gentleman from Japan is incredible at making these instruments. My favorite YouTube video of his involves a broccoli ocarina (check it out). I also found The Vegetable Orchestra from Germany featured on Oddmusic.com. They actually have their own site – check it out here.

Our school community will learn to reuse, recycle, and conserve this week. I can’t wait to share with you what we find!

Go Green!

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Earth Day 2007 - Atlantic Reflection by FlyingSinger on Flickr

Our school is celebrating Earth Week, April 19 ~ 23! We will engage the entire school for a  week-long conversations, lessons and activities around sustainability, responsibility, and awareness. I am very happy about our school community coming together to learn in fun ways! Stay tuned for my next post about what our Music Department will be presenting during that week.

For now, I thought I would share a simple song that our 3rd graders and I wrote together. Those of you who have read my previous posts know that every teacher in our school leads an assembly. One of the third-grade teachers will be presenting during that week and asked me to prepare her kids to sing an environmentally fun song. Although there was a short easy song from a publisher, I wanted to experiment and see if it was possible to write an original song with the third-grade students. As we were brainstorming, I was reminded again that my young students thrive when given an opportunity to think and create. Both sections of the grade worked beautifully (we even had a scribe from each class, taking down ideas!).

From simple ideas, singable phrases came together. I played the guitar and started singing some of these phrases together with the students. We had a great time writing this song for our school. The entire grade will teach this song to our school community. Here is our first take on the song:

Because this recording is a “first” for these young students, their singing isn’t perfect. But I heart this particular recording because it captures their personality, their sweet voices and their enthusiasm for learning. If I get a chance, maybe I will post a polished version of this song with our entire school singing…

If you who were looking for an Earth Day song and would like to use this, please feel free! You can leave me a comment if you need chords or have ideas how you might you want to use this song. And if you need some classroom ideas, take a look at these sites for great ways to get yourself and your students involved!