♪♫ I'm a Beleiver ♪♩

My boys are seriously into the song "I'm a Believer" by The Monkees (or "The Face Song" as Little Brother likes to call it). I know it's not as highbrow as Robert Frost, but I'm a believer in the benefits of using a child's interests to help them learn.

So, I wrote the lyrics of the song on sentence strips, hung them up in the school room, and put track number four of the Monkees Greatest Hits on repeat.  The boys were in heaven listening to their favorite song as many times as they wanted.

It's amazing how quickly kids learn new things when music is involved!

• Big Brother used the pointer to identify each word as it was being sung. He can now read a bunch of new words, such as "believe", "disappointed" and "haunted".
• I drew a few simple symbols under some of the words (face☺, love♥, sunshine☼, rain☔) to help aid with word identification. 
• We discussed the meaning of the song. I was so pleased to hear Big Brother explain to Little Brother that the singer was so sad about not being in love that it made him have bad dreams. 
• We talked about the concept of a chorus, and I designated the beginning and end of the chorus in this song with a star. 
• Although my original intention with this activity was to work on reading skills, I realized how much further I could go in the way of music appreciation or even poetry.

So, there's not a trace of doubt in my mind that our little monkeys learned a lot this week from The Monkees. Next week, perhaps we'll work on Frost.

For your listening pleasure, here's "The Face Song"....