Happy weekend! After a short hiatus, I’m back with a brand new “Sunday Singalong” video. This time I’m shakin’ it up with a song I wrote specifically for fruit shakers, which I added to my instrument collection last summer.  I’ve posted this song before, so you can listen to the entire song and get the sheet music by following that link.

The “Shaky Fruit” song is very straightforward, and the objectives are clear: listen (or use visual cues) for your turn to shake your fruit, and only shake your fruit during your turn.  But the second version I presented goes just a little deeper.

The key moment comes when I ask the group, “Where is (child’s name)?” and the child replies, “Here I am!”.  The primary objective was for the child to respond verbally to his or her own name; playing the instrument is simply a reward for doing so.

My friend and colleague, Lea Keating, explains the importance of a child being able to do just that in her latest blog post.  It took a very scary situation to remind her of this, as she details in her post, but it serves as a lesson for every parent, therapist, and educator out there.  You can read it here.