October 2019 - Listen Together Podcast

Cake

Posted on October 29, 2019December 13, 2019 by Gillian Sharma

Teri sings a song called “I Can Clap My Hands” in this podcast. There are lots of other actions in the song too – tap your foot, nod your head, jump and many more. I expect you can think of your own ideas to put in the song.

Our story is called “Katie And The Cake.” We have a special guest reading it for us – my friend Jim. Katie saves up her pocket money to buy a fancy cupcake for her Mom’s birthday and she is sure her Mom will love it.

Have you ever made a cake, or helped someone in your family make a cake, or some cupcakes? It is fun to do. You can pretend to make a cake with Anneliese as she sings “Let’s Make a Cake Together.” You get to add ingredients to the bowl and stir, stir, stir! I hope you have fun with this song about cake.

FALL

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Gillian Sharma

We meet James and his baby brother Jack again in this podcast called FALL. You may remember them from another podcast where James is so excited when he learns he is going to be a big brother, then so disappointed when baby Jack can’t do anything. In the story today Jack does lots of things.

The first song is called “Things I can Do” and you get to do all those things with me. The song uses a different letter for each verse. For example the first verse has things I can do beginning with P. I sing “I can pedal,” “I can paint,” “I can paddle,” and “I can play.” I also include the letters S, T and D. I’m sure you can think of lots of ideas for the song.

Anneliese sings the second song called “Walking, Walking, Walking,” which has lots of actions you can join in with. And of course the song lends itself to allowing you to come up with some different actions. If you have listened to several podcasts, you will know I often have action songs included. A new action, in both songs, is keeping still. This is quite hard for young children to do, but gets better with practice (just keep singing the songs!) as children learn to control their bodies.

This is definitely an action-packed podcast. Enjoy!

SQUIRREL

Posted on October 16, 2019December 12, 2019 by Gillian Sharma

A while ago, we were able to watch a squirrel perched on a sunflower head, munching on the seeds. From this observation, a whole podcast grew. I wrote the story of squirrel watching the sunflower grow, waiting for the delicious seeds. As you probably can guess, it is not quite as easy as Squirrel expects.

The first song has the little grey squirrel going up, up, up the maple tree, then down, down, down the maple tree. You may notice how the music moves up the scale with the squirrel and down the scale as he ascends and descends the tree. This is one of those songs I love to sing with children as it allows us to get creative and think of different trees for the squirrel to go up and down.

The second song is a very gentle song about flowers and is incredibly easy to sing along with. We begin with a sunflower, then sing snapdragon, primrose, wild orchid and end with an opportunity for the listener to add a couple of flowers of their own choice.

I hope you enjoy this podcast.

SPIDERS

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Gillian Sharma

I think this podcast called SPIDERS is one of my favorites. The first song is a nursery rhyme you will know, “The Incy Wincy Spider,” so please sing it with Teri. Singing this nursery rhyme with children we often change the words and sing “the teeny tiny spider” or “the roly poly spider” and make our actions and voices match the spider.

Our story features a spider called Webster that unknowingly becomes a “pet” for William. I have written several stories that involve a group of children who are at school together. Sometimes the story is about the whole class and their teachers, Miss Emily and Miss Hannah, and sometimes about one of the children in the class. William is in this class. Perhaps you recognize William’s friends – James, Flora, Katie, Tom and Zoe – from other stories?

The song “The Busy Spider” is one I composed and is a song I enjoy very much. The words for the chorus are:

I am a busy spider

‘Cos if I want to eat

I have to build a spider web

That’s strong, and sticky and neat.

I hope you sing this part along with Bethany. Now not all spiders make webs, but many do, and that’s what the spider in our story does. I did some research about spiders and building webs and used the information I learned for the lyrics in the song.