Wee Sing America

We recently bought Wee Sing America CD and it's been going non-stop in the van. I consider it our American History cum music curriculum. It has a lot of fun songs, but 2 songs in particular have caught the fancy of the kids. One is a minor-key round (that sounds very much like that classic English round "Hey, ho, nobody home") that goes, "America, America, land of hope and liberty; Freedom rings from every mountain, from sea to sea." When we get into the van, there is a clamor for "Music, music!" and then "Go to number 14 [the round]". So we sing the round several times. Supriya insists on me singing a different strand from hers, and she holds her part very well. Then we skip a song and jump to #17 which is a very cool song listing the 50 American States (mostly alphabetically). We sing it several times through. By now even I have memorized the 50 names, to the point where I have it running through my head when I am trying to sleep at night!

Aseem also sings along with most of these. His favorite is "Yankee Doodle Boy", the George M. Cohan classic. The CD has Cohan's "You're a Grand Old Flag" as well, so I decided to seize the opportunity and get "Yankee Doodle Dandy" from Netflix. It's a biopic about Cohan (with Jimmy Cagney doing a fabulous job in the lead role, getting the Oscar as a matter of fact!), with some really great music. The kids are enjoying it, watching it daily for the last several days.

I can't recommend both the CD and the movie enough.