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Waltzing With The Fireflies - Elizabeth McMahon

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Parent Choice Recommended Winner 2000, "Waltzing with Fireflies", is a fanciful recording with melodies that keep you company all day long.

The children's chorus will charm you with their beautiful blend of young voices and harmonies so sweet you'll shiver. Enjoy the many musical styles that make this recording so much fun.  "Henny Penny", "Fiddle I Fee", "Butterfly", "Columbus Said" and more are great for the classroom too. 

 Children, parents, grandparents and teachers will love listening to and singing these loveable songs.  Print the sheet music to play this song at home.

Activities

Riding My Bicycle
Finding beauty in the flowers by the roadside
In Spring and Summer collectwild flowers in your yard to identify. 
Draw pictures of each one and print the name underneath.
Press the flowers to use later on for cards. (put flower between wax paper inside a heavy book)
Punch holes in the drawings and make a book of Wildflowers
Share your book as a gift for family and friends
In this song, the wild flowers are Black Eyed Susan, Chicory, Queen Ann’s Lace, and Butter and Eggs. 
Columbus Said 
Columbus Said. Celebrate the discovery of Christopher Columbus by dancing to this song. 
    “ Everybody get up

            Now spin around , Columbus said, the earth was round.

            Can you imagine if it was flat?

            He’d sailed the ocean and never come back!”

 

Discombobulated
Family night dictionary game - one person finds a word in the dictionary that no one will know.  Everybody makes up their own definition of the word. One person has the real definition, and you go around the circle reading your definition. Then each player guesses who has the correct definition. The winner is the person who gets the most votes for the real definition.

Dear Old Wooly Bear
The wooly bear caterpillar appears in the Fall in upstate New York. It’s  black and brown and very fuzzy and when you pick it up it curls up in a ball to protect itself. Listen to the words and feel the excitement of the first frost and the Halloween season. Draw a picture of a witch flying across a cornfield with a skeleton dancing on the  hillside.     
Hopscotch Toodle-oo

Sing along and try the round. Draw a hopscotch board on your driveway orsidewalk.  (kids playing hopscotch)

Hopscotch originated in Britain during the Early Roman period.  It was initially designed as a training regiment for Roman foot solders who ran the course in full armor and field packs as it was thought this regimen would improve their footwork.  Roman children imitated the soldiers by drawing their own boards and creating a scoring system, and "Hopscotch" spread throughout Europe .
1,000 Daisies
This song is perfect for Earth Day celebrations. It’s all about appreciating the wonders of nature.  Play this song piano or guitar. Click here for sheet music.   Celebrate Earth Day with daisy chains, bouquets of wild flowers for a neighbor or family, or draw a picture of the world of daisies as a gift for mom's refrigerator.  Send Mrs. McPuppet YOUR picture of daisies for Mrs. McPuppets' Online Refrigerator.  Print sheet music for this song and play it at home.
100 year old House
 My house was built in 1870.  Many families have lived within it’s walls and I . When was your house built? What makes it special?

Draw a picture of your house and the interesting things in your yard.
Fiddle I fee- A Memory Song
Make up motions for each animal. For instance, Cat goes fiddle I fee , pretend you have a fiddle and play it for “Cat goes fiddle I fee fiddle I fee.” Now you make up a motion for Hen goes Chipsy Chopsy , bend at the elbow and make your arms flap like a bird, and so on with the other animals.

Learn the simple melody and then at a party or in the classroom.  Let each person be one of the animals. Then, as everyone gets better at it, go faster for the final run through starting at the top of the line. Shorten the number of characters for fewer people. 

Butterfly
The delicate butterfly always captures our attention. It has such an amazing life cycle with magic and gold included for the Monarch. 

Make your own butterflies and caterpillars, decorate them with stripes, dots, and swirls. Look at the hundreds of designs in a butterfly book.  (pattern, instructions)  picture)  Click here to download our new butterfly puppet!

Henny Penny
 This folktale is from England and  the animals are named in a silly fun way- Henny Penny , Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, Foxy Woxy, Cocky Locky shades of Charllottes Web and the way the goose talks”

Trace the patterns onto tagboard ( manilla folders work fine) color and glue on feathers and tape a stick to on the back to make puppets.  (click for puppet pattern)  Click here for the puppet pattern for Ducky Lucky. Email me for the patterns for the rest of the characters. 

In the classroom, the teacher narrates the story.

 ‘One bright sunny morning Henny Penny was out in the yard scratching for corn, ,the Henny Pennies stand up, push their chairs in and begin to buck buck buck , when all of a sudden something fell from the sky and hit her on the head. Ouch ! Goodness gracious me, the sky is falling!  The H.Ps begin  walking around the table singing the chorus while the teacher claps the beat.

The sky is falling the sky is falling,

Henny Penny cried out!

We must go tell the King today

For how else will he find out?

For how else will he find out?

 Henny Penny skipped out of the barnyard and there was Ducky Lucky taking a bath in a puddle 
(all the Ducky Luckys stand up,: “Henny Penny, where are you going?” etc.

You can make up the description of how the animals travel, “ they slid down a waterfall, they waded through the swamp. Eventually, the children can have fun narrating that part ( good for imaginations) 

Soon the children will know when to chime in with their parts. When you get to Foxy Woxy- who convinces everyone that he knows the short cut and to go down the hole over there, designate an area of the room for the hole and have each character go there and be still until the end of the story when Henny Penny heads back to the barn to lay her egg. Invite each character back to their spot in groups to avoid chaos.