Tim was toodling around with Garage Band this weekend, and he asked the kids to spit out some song lyrics. Here is a sampling of what they came up with; I was very surprised (and more than a little heartbroken) by the dark imagery:
there's a flower that's prettier than the others
it spins when the wind hits it
the flower wants to have 18 petals
right now it has no petals
people picked them allIsaac (age 7.5)
home was home
home was fragile
i saw a sign that said no thank you.
when i was old,
i was strong and i flipped through the air
one day i saw a little star in the morning
i saw a sign that said No!
one day i went into the garden
and i saw myself floating on a lily padEmi (age 4.5)
Man, was that depressing or what? Isaac's little petals ravaged by the envious hordes, and Emi sounds like Ophelia floating down the river! I resolved to start playing less Radiohead and more Mother Goose around the house. My poor little babies!
Which reminds me: I have discovered that my kids have huge gaping holes in their nursery rhyme knowledge bank. When prompted, Isaac couldn't fully recite "Humpty Dumpty," and he had never even heard of "The Muffin Man." How was that possible? I totally freaked out and went into intense stage mom mode, drilling him on the last line of "London Bridge" and barking at him to repeat it back to me. I then freaked Tim out while maniacally singing all EIGHT verses of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and so I recomposed myself for fear of additionally scarring the children. I couldn't help the gusto; nursery rhymes were the bread and butter of 1980's ESL classes, and they brought back lots of very old memories!
Apparently the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) also takes Mother Goose and Raffi way too seriously, because they have compiled a comprehensive list with links to full lyrics and MIDI files on their website. Let the educatin' commence!
