Hello, and happy sunday!
It's Sarah Baldwin and welcome back to another "Sunday with Sarah."
It was so nice to connect with you all last week with my first video after a
long winter hiatus. Last week's video, in case you missed, was about the
power of verses for children and how verses can ease transitions throughout the day
and give a child a sense of reverence. Anyway, this past week I got a lot of
comments from you.
Thank you for all of you who've been in touch. A lot of requests for more verses.
So, I thought I'd follow up today with five new songs for transitional periods
that can be spoken as a verse or sung. Singing throughout the day is
something that's done by a lot of Waldorf teachers that, especially in early
childhood, can keep children in a more dreamy phase without waking them up too
much out of their play and really help ease transition times. I remember back
when I started teaching in a mainstream pre-school and the teachers would shout
out "Five minutes till cleanup time!" And, you know, five minutes later "Ok,
it's time to clean up!" A lot of children would really feel jolted out of
their play or resistant to the change and so just by gently singing a song
that indicates it's cleanup time
children will hear the song
slowly and gently transition out of their play. So today I've got for you
five sung verses that can be used throughout the day and the first one is
a good morning song. This is the song I always sang in my kindergarten class
when everyone had gathered and was present and we would begin our circle
time this way.
"Good morning, dear earth
Good morning, dear sun
Good morning, dear resting stones and beasts on the run
Good morning, dear flowers and birds trees
Good morning to you, good morning to me." Maybe you heard my bird in the
background singing like the birds and the trees. Again, I'm recording this at
home and that's my pet cockatiel you hear in the
background. I will post the words to all of these songs i'm going to share with
you on the blog which you can find at sarahbaldwin.com or at
moonchildblog.com, both will lead you to the same place. The next song is a little verse
that I would sing at clean up time.
It's a short, little song and I would just sing it gently and quietly over and
over until the room was all picked up and it goes like this:
"Tick tock goes the clock
What does it have to say?
Time for us to pick up our toys and put them all away
Tick tock goes the clock
What does it have to say? Time for us to pick up our toys and put them all away"
And I would just start singing this as I began picking up the first things and
keep singing it and if children were still playing
I would maybe hand them a doll or a basket of blocks to pick up and carry to
their home. Again, it's a very gentle, easy way to transition to clean up time
and to get more cooperation. Someone this week asked me if I had a
verse for folding laundry, and I do! It's another short little one.
I'll just grab a cloth napkin here to demonstrate.
Usually I would find a partner, a child to take two corners of, say, a big play
cloth or tablecloth or play silk and we'll take
the corners and I'd have the children kind of help me fluff it up and down and
then we sing: "Corner to corner meet and greet. Fold our cloth so nice and neat. Corner
to corner meet and greet. Fold our cloth so nice and neat." And then again that's a little
verse you can just repeat softly and gently as you're doing your folding. I
shared with you a meal time blessing last week, a mealtime verse, and I thought
I'd share another one of my favorites with you today and this one can be
sung or spoken:
"Blessings on the blossoms
Blessings on the roots
Blessings on the leaves and stems, Blessings on the fruit
Blessings on the blossoms, Blessing on the roots
Blessings on the leaves and stems
Blessings on the fruit
Blessings on our meal time and enjoy your snack." Or lunch, or dinner. And finally
the last one I'm going to leave you with today is a goodbye song and you might
find this helpful if you're a teacher or if you're a homeschooler who homeschools
with a group or part of a group of children. This one goes like this
and we would sing this in a circle at the end of the day, holding hands:
"Dear friends goodbye, dear friends goodbye.
Now is the time of day when we all go our way.
Dear friends goodbye, dear friends goodbye. Go well and safely. Go well and
safely. Go well and safely. Our love
be ever with you."
So I hope you found those helpful. Thank you so much, those of you who have left
comments on the blog and shared your own favorite verses. Please keep sharing them,
they're so valuable. Thanks, once again, for tuning in.
I will plan to see you again next week. Have a wonderful week.
Bye-bye.