Sunday, November 1, 2015

Our Desire and Goal for EVERY Song that We Create

Here is a screen shot of a comment stream on our 50 States and Capitals Song from our YouTube channel. 

It is the ultimate goal every single time that we set out to create a Silly School Song.


Math Facts and Music!!!

Hello Everyone here is the Adding by 1 Song, the Adding by 2 Song, and the Adding by 3 Song all in one post!

I am uber-excited to post this blog entry! OK, I have to give you just a little bit of background on how we've come to doing a series of addition math facts and eventually subtraction facts songs.

Some of you may know that I teach my kids a bit of Hebrew. We do the Aleph Beit, The Lord's Prayer in Hebrew and the Hebrew numbers 1-20.

My 7 year old struggles with working alone and memorization. As per usual, she was having a hard time memorizing the Hebrew numbers, so I stood in the kitchen with her and popped my fingers to a simple 2:4 timing and repeated the numbers in a simple rhythm, and like magic, the child has not forgotten them from that day. She could not even remember them after two whole weeks of repetition before that!!!

At that point, I got an idea. I instantly went in to Phillip and said we need to do the addition math facts to nothing but a drum beat to help kids like Chelsea who struggle with flashcards and memorization because, as you might have guessed, she has not done well with fact memorization.

I wasn't too worried about that though because we use Singapore math which teaches number sense, which just so happens to match her learning style perfectly. Consequently, she is very good in math, just not good at memorization.

Therefore, I am posting our last three songs in this one post!!! Excitiiiiing!!!

I really hope this helps young learners, like my Chelsea, who love math (because she does) and who are good at math (because she is), but who are kinesthetic as well as energetic (which she is both) and just can't stand to sit still to memorize and/or retain such "silly" things as math facts. ;)

Here is the music: Adding by 1 Song, Adding by 2 Song, and Adding by 3 Song.

Oh in true Phillip and Stephanie form, when we are both in creative mode at the same time, sparks will fly. He is passionate about the music and I am passionate about the effectiveness of the content in the song and it is quite often a tug of war until the song is published.

So I went in to him saying, "all we need is a simple drum beat and maybe some cymbal-crashing and THAT'S IT, and it will trigger their brains to memorize the information!!!!" I was sure that I was clear, I know that I was passionate, and still, he had no intentions of ever making a simple rhythm.

I was able to talk him down on some things, but he was not budging on much. I do still think that the songs are effective and sound great. I think he did a really great job on each one.

Maybe that is simply the creative process, you fight and push and pull until you come up with something really great. That is what I believe we do every time.

Thanks for reading and listening. And please subscribe to our channel here.

Stephanie.

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