Children’s musicians Erin Lee and Marci bring us the next of their regular posts with thematic recommendations for kid-friendly music, plus activities to make the songs an interactive experience for the whole family. Look for Erin Lee and Marci here on the first Monday of each month, or visit their homepage, www.gottaplay.org.
I’ve created links to Amazon for the full albums (click the album image or name), plus links to Amazon MP3 downloads for those who want only the singles. (Click the song name.) —DR
Today we ran out of our Halloween candy, but it’s a good thing, as we’ve been gorging ourselves on gummy eyeballs. With our candy gone it’s time to start thinking about healthy snacks, so here are some songs to remind us that there’s a whole refrigerator of nutritious food to eat when your plastic pumpkin basket runs dry:
“Eating Is Fun, Eating Is Serious
(Patricia Shih, Big Ideas!
Patricia’s ode to eating is catchy, contagious and seriously fun. We frequently catch ourselves singing this jazzy tune at restaurants, vegetable markets and knish carts all over the city.
Luckily, it’s hip enough that we never embarrass ourselves when we’re overheard!
“New Food Attitude
(Jay Mankita, Eat Like a Rainbow
This is a very funky, very groovy salute to food that’s good for us! And truthfully, buying the CD is good for kids — a healthy portion of the money goes to support the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food. Check it out!
Okay . . . now we have a confession to make. We must come clean . . . We have not written a single song, poem, or story about healthy eating. Not ever. We’ve written about Junk Food! So here’s our poem about what NOT to eat:
A Little League Lament
(Erin Lee & Marci, Someone’s Gotta Wanna Play
Even though this is set at a ballgame, the narrator isn’t mentioning the ballgame at all. This narrator likes stadium food — it’s her favorite part of baseball! She clearly has terrible eating habits. So use this piece as a way to jumpstart a conversation about how to create a balanced diet, and the difference between healthy food and junk food.
PS: That isn’t either Erin Lee OR Marci that you hear on the recording. It’s our friend Jennifer Barnhart of Between the Lions and Broadway’s Avenue Q, and we’re fairly sure that even though she loves our songs and poems, she doesn’t endorse our eating habits! And now, we have to go, there’s one more gummy eyeball stuck in the bottom of our plastic pumpkin basket . . . .