Making up new lyrics to familiar songs is another quick musical activity which your children might well already be doing (if they are, please take the opportunity to pat yourself on the back for allowing them to further their musical education and pour yourself a nice cup of tea!).

I was raised in a house where every mundane activity provided an excuse to sing – so as a toddler screaming that I wasn’t tired, my dad would be attacking me with a flannel and singing, ‘This is the way we wash our face, wash our face, wash our face…’ (from ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’). Perhaps we were slightly odd (who am I kidding? We were definitely odd!) but, for better or worse, I seem to be passing that tradition on to my children.

I played the kids the ‘Found a Peanut’ song the other day (is it strange that I didn’t already know this song?), and now we have several topical variations such as ‘Found a Minion’, ‘ Dropped a Cheerio’, and ‘Made you Laugh’…

The girls also made use of the Mulberry Bush melody for their masterpiece, ‘The Old Lady Sat in a Chair’, (The old lady sat in a chair/In the car and everywhere/The old lady sat in a chair/EV-RY-WHERE!).

This also works for rhymes without melodies; we have been treated to endless variations on, ‘Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?‘, to keep spirits up during hikes and car journeys.

Making up these silly rhymes is, most importantly, fun – but it’s also a opportunity to experiment with rhyme and rhythm and to express some creativity.

Should you need a reminder of the Mulberry Bush song, here’s a cute version.  

And for anyone else who lived in a cave (or maybe the UK) and doesn’t know ‘Found a Peanut’, it’s sung to the tune of ‘Oh my darling Clemantine‘, and we discovered it in Lisa Loeb’s very fun ‘Silly Sing-Along’ book (with CD).