To say that it has been a while since my last post would be an absolute understatement. It is 3am on a Thursday morning and my youngest daughter has a Geography class in the morning and they both have basketball practice tomorrow afternoon. To say that I should be asleep and getting rest for the busy day ahead is an even bigger understatement.
Somehow though, I found myself reading over my old blog tonight. Looking at the house we used to live in, in the town that we used to live in, in the state that we used to live in.
Yes, a lot has happened since my last post.
We have moved to my husband's home state of North Carolina! It has been amazing and difficult all at the same time. However, to see what God has done for us is to stand in awe of His omnipotence.
I write this blog tonight though, simply to say to my two young ladies (in the truest since of the phrase, "young ladies") don't go...
Y'all they are not the same little girls that I used to blog about who were doing adding worksheets from Saxon Math using counting bears, or learning about the scientific method through springtime planting. They are no longer standing at the white board with a marker in hand, cautiously writing words like dog, egg and cat.
Nope, they are young ladies. Young. Ladies.
I'm praying everyday for their future. I'm trusting God where I can not see, but tonight, as I read over these old posts and comments from another time...I just want to say..."don't go girls, don't go."
Here are our latest two songs all in one post for your convenience! Thank you for following us, subscribing and liking our videos. There are more to come!
I hope so far that your school year is going well. We are having a wonderful year so far. We have an extra kid in our school and that has made it more fun and more tiring, but we are getting it done.
Our next song has been published for almost a week now. We are very proud of how it turned out, we hope you enjoy it, give it a thumbs up and share it! Here it is:
Let us know what you think at www.youtube.com/sillyschoolsongs!
Soooo that just happened! :) Seriously, we published another song last night. It is The Planet Venus Song and as always, we had a lot of fun writing it and recording it. I also get the feeling that Phillip had a great time making the beat. We added new elements to this video that he and I had a lot of fun creating. The girls added their silly touch during certain parts as well.
We tried really hard to chock it full of nuts, I mean facts. :) --just humoring myself right now. We hope you like it and share it and let us know about it at www.youtube.com/sillyschoolsongs. <3 p="">
Hello Everybody! Today is a great day for so many reasons. We are headed to our home school co-op this morning which is so much fun and gives us more time in the mornings to get ready and have some "lolly-gagging" time that we don't usually get during the week. There are other reasons also, but I will go ahead and jump to the one that has sparked the need for another blog post. We finished the writing on our latest song this past Sunday and have since recorded it, created a video for it and published it on YouTube. This song was so fun to do and Phillip worked really hard on the video non-stop in order to get it out before 12am last night. So here it is, THE PLANET MERCURY SONG! Y'all, I hope you like it. I hope you find it fun to listen to and to sing, easy to share with your students and classes and children, easy to learn from, full of useful facts and good enough to give a THUMBS UP on YouTube!
Last week I was especially excited about the many wonderful comments that this blog received about our songs. This week I have even greater news. A school somewhere in the U.S. requested a skip counting by twelve song because they said that they couldn't find any good 12s songs. What an honor!!
So we created it. The teacher now has contacted us saying that her class wants to meet us via Skype or Google Hangouts. She went so far as to say that the children have been inspired by what we do and that our skip counting songs have gone viral in their school. What an honor!!!!!!!!!
Well, I hope that all our readers and listeners have enjoyed our songs just as much as that little classroom somewhere in the U.S.A and as much as we have enjoyed creating them.
Here is our latest:
Thanks for listening, please give us a THUMBS UP on our YouTube channel and drop us a comment if you like it!
Before I get started with this blog post I have to say a HUGE thank you to those of you who left comments on this blog about our songs!!! That means to the world to us. It is our intent to assist in the learning process of all types of learners, and your feedback has been tremendous to that end. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Our latest song is The Noun Song. We are excited about this one although the path to its release was a bit out of sync for us. We thought we'd finished the song so we published it only to delete it and re-record it. I don't know, it sounded a bit dull and boring, so we went back to the drawing board after it had about 40 views, 3 likes on YouTube and several likes on Facebook, but you know what we are so glad that we did. We just feel that this version is more in line with the type of songs that we make and want to continue to make. It is energetic and upbeat and I hope you like it.
Kudos to our 10 year old who changed the melody of the chorus for us. It is truly a family affair.
Here it is:
Thank you for listening, subscribing to our YouTube channel and sharing our songs.
Here's the latest song. It is the 7 Days of the Week Song. This song is for preschoolers and is of course repetitive for learning. Phillip did a great job on the silly sound effects that he incorporated into the song, and we all had fun with it in general.
It has a movement element added in to help kids get the wiggles out! Here it is, get ready to clap your hands, stomp your feet and wiggle your whole body with the Seven Days of the Week Song:
All we need to finish this series of songs is the 11s and 12s. Then we're going to compile them all in one video and make them available for download on our website www.sillyschoolsongs.com.
Thanks guys for listening, watching and giving our songs thumbs up on youtube.
Today, my seven year old had a wellness check-up. She was awesome! Her vision is 20/13!!! That is funny seeing that both my husband and I wear glasses. Her hearing is normal. What's interesting is that I have worried that she needed glasses and probably couldn't hear that well. LOL When in actuality, she has probably just been ignoring me and occupied with her own world.
Then, I had all these plans to come home, catch up on the cleaning that I didn't get to do before the appointment, was going to start dinner early, do Madison's hair and get it all done before we went back out to our fellowship. Needless to say, none of that happened, but you know what did happen...
We published The Solar System Song!!!!! And here it is...I hope you like it. I really do. We worked hard on it and I think it really teaches some important details about our Solar System. Here it is. Please give it a thumbs up if you like it, and if you have not yet subscribed to our channel...please do.
As Phillip has put it, the skip counting songs roll on. This song was so fun! Phillip really put some good elements in the music and the video that makes it a lot fun! It, coincidentally, is right now our fastest growing song ever!!
We are thankful and I hope you listen, I hope you like it and I hope it helps out your home school or classroom.
Here it is...
Thank you for subscribing to our channel and giving this song a thumbs up on YouTube!
Here is the latest song and video from our Silly School Songs project. Thank you for listening and we really hope it helps with memorization of the multiplication math facts.
I am so adamant that our songs actually 'teach' kids something that it was a must for us to incorporate the array into the video to give kids the visual for multiplication. When you're doing memory work, it is pretty straight forward, and not a lot of teaching to be done, just memorization. However, by creating educational music, we can teach using visuals when the concept is so simple that it doesn't leave a lot of room for teaching.
So here goes...
Please subscribe to our YouTube channel, thumbs up our songs, and share them if you like them. Also, check out our older posts for other songs that we've created.
Ok, I know what you're thinking, "it was so much time between our last song and the 2 Times Table Song that you'd almost forgotten about us, and now there was only a few days from the 2 Times Table song being published to this new one, the Skip Counting by Seven song!"
Your words exactly right? Right.
It is our goal at this point to put out a new song every week either on Sunday or Wednesday.
You heard right!
I am excited about that and am looking forward to it. I just told Phillip though that I am going to have to break up putting out Math songs with songs of other subjects. I just don't think that I am going to be able to do 15 more math songs with no reprieve.
At any rate, I am blessed to be making music and adding value to the home school and education community as a whole. Here is our latest. Oh, also, this one was somewhat of a request by a teacher for us to create. That is so awesome!!!
Thank you for listening, thumbs upping and subscribing.
It has been a while since I've updated this blog. I've been so busy with the holiday season, our children, making memories, and taking a break from school. I am happy to announce that Phillip has finished school officially. I am so proud of him! The girls are ready for a trip to Virginia to see him participate in the graduation ceremony.
I took a break because I just wanted to make sure I could approach the holiday season without the added stress of class deadlines and such and it worked. We were able to make our own stocking this year, ornaments and popcorn garland for the tree.
The stockings that we had, I picked up at the Dollar Store some 7 or 8 years ago when Binky was about a year old. We only had stockings for the girls and I had them decorate them with glitter glue and such. They were sweet just because the girls decorated them when they were so young and because we'd had them so long, but it was certainly past the time for a stocking upgrade for the Rich family. So here they are:
Snowy scene
Christmas lights and ornaments
An elf
Snow flakes
Now, the reason for this blog post: we found the time to create another song!!! We are so excited as always. It is another math song to which I continue to protest, but Phillip makes a great point about it. The math songs garner a lot of views on YouTube which says to him that people (parents, teachers and children) are looking for them, so we are going to continue to create them. We are definitely in this to provide value to the education community that we are a part of online, and if math songs is what is wanted, math songs is what we will do. However, I have to be honest and say that I am eager to get back to other subjects like science, history and grammar. Here it is folks:
***The Two Times Table Song
Thanks for reading and listening!Please 'thumbs up' our song on YouTube, subscribe to our channel, and share our music.
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.
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.
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.
Wow! It seems we are getting quicker with getting songs out. I'm pretty sure that it is too early to really say that; however, I feel like we just posted The Life Cycle of a Butterfly song and here I am all gitty and excited about our latest published masterpiece. :) Here it is guys, The Life Cycle of a Frog.
Phillip and I write all of the songs together. I am a stickler that there be actual teaching in the song. It is all too easy to write and produce a song that sounds good and is fun for kids to hear, but leave out the fact that teachers and mommies and teaching daddies want a product that will be fun and educational.
Case in point: originally the chorus of this song was:
"Life cycle of a frog you know, round and round the life cycle goes." (repeat)
Well that's good, but the teacher in me screams, "NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!" (not literal screams)
So he and I played around with the words until we stumbled upon: "Life cycle of a frog, you know from a pile of eggs to a little tadpole life cycle of a frog, you know from a froglet to a big frog he grows"
Then the teacher in me was hap hap happy because were able to name the four stages that the frog goes through all in the chorus just like we did with The Life Cycle of the Butterfly.
I also love the line that says, "Like a true amphibian, he'll soon have two homes"
If you can't tell, I am very proud of this song!
Please listen and if you like it, give us a thumbs up and if you haven't yet, SUBSCRIBE!
Thanks everybody!
Here is a song that I am most happy about publishing. The Life Cycle of a Butterfly was written and sang by my husband and me. He also produced the music for the song. I just think that it has a good amount of science in it for a two-minute song and that it paints a well-rounded picture of the process that the caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly (egg, larva, pupa and imago). Phillip also put the video together, and I think he chose some really vivid and beautiful nature shots to go along with this simple and sweet song. Our girls make an audio cameo as well.
So please take a listen. If you are teaching life cycles this year, I hope you will use it over and over again. Either way, if you like it, give it a thumbs up at our youtube channel. We are planning to do more life cycle songs very shortly.
Last night I was up until past 3 o' clock in the morning. That's not a very big deal as my family and I are typical night owls, although 3 AM is a little wacky for us!
But I have had nights like that periodically. Not often, but periodically and usually it is as much a spiritual thing for me as perhaps a physical one. I usually feel a burning desire to pray for my children, my extended family, the body of Christ, the unsaved...you know, I'm usually up moving mountains if it passes 3 AM. :)
I usually imagine plenty of moms of different languages, dialects and cultures all over the world are up at that hour thinking, writing, praying, or God forbid (as I have been known to do) worrying right along with me. Don't we do it? Don't we tend to worry if the kids are alright, going to be alright, going to turn out alright? Well last night I did a little bit of it all.
I wrote some letters to my girls about things that I felt each one needs to hear from their mommy's heart.. For Madison it was the fact that she is beautiful just the way God has put her together inside and out, and for Chelsea, it was that she is loved by God and that that love is perfect and is more than enough.
They are only 9 and 7, but for me, my job and influence as a mother is most important at every age level.
So, as I listened to some Mp3s and watched some YouTube videos into the wee hours of the morning, I created this acronym. I am at a place in my parenting of the girls where I am wanting them to be comfortable as their true selves. I don't want them to reach for the dreams that mommy has for them, or to accomplish things that are "good" for them, but are not God's "best" for them.
Anyway, here is the meme:
So as my girls and I head back to home school this year, our focus is GOD's plans, God's goals, and God's desires as we are able to understand them. Believing that He gives each of us the desires of our hearts, believing that man's mind plans his way but that it is God who directs his path...we are endeavoring to walk to the beat of those plans, ideas, and goals. And, it starts with me...it starts with me letting go of my "good" ideas and embracing His great ideas. It starts with me letting go of my grand plans and following God's prescribed method of parenting while trusting the outcome to Him.
I love it.
This year, I am home schooling and being home schooled.
God bless all of you who are, with me, going BACK to school.
Steph.
We have another awesome skip counting song for you and your kiddos.
If your child will not be doing full-on school work over the summer, you can keep their brain wheels turning with some fun, educational music. It won't feel like work, but it will work the brain!
