Lyrics to a folk song from Canada
Lessons by Joan Robson, a music teacher in Liverpool, NY

You can use music to interpret a song. Children can create their own ideas about what a “mighty moose” might look like or how a lake might move. What sounds do you hear in the forest? How would you make that sound? In this lesson children decide how they can become the underlined word in the song below. It's a quick lesson on improvisation. The fun in this exercise is that each child brings his/her own unique creativity to the song and the outcome is never the same each time it is performed.

Materials

The song “Land of the Silver Birch” from Red Grammer's recording, Down the Do Re Mi
The imagination of every child
Children may choose to add props that they spy in the room.

Procedure:

Play the song, Land of the Silver Birch.  Then ask the students to imagine what the underlined words would look like and sound like.  Invited students up to act out the underlined words listed below.  Play the song again and have the students act out their parts.  You can more than one student play a part. For example you might want to have a group of children be a forest, a lowland or hills of the north.

(introduction)
(verse 1)
Land of the silver birch
Home of the beaver
Where the mighty moose
wanders at will
(refrain)
Blue lake and rocky shore
I will return once more
Boom di-de boom, boom
Boom di-de boom, boom
Wo----Wo----Wo----
(verse 2)
Down in the forest
Deep in the lowlands
My heart cries out for thee
Hills of the north
(refrain)
Blue lake and rocky shore
I will return once more
Boom di-de boom, boom
Boom di-de boom, boom
Boom di-de boom, boom
Wo----Wo----Wo----
(instrumental interlude)
(verse 1)
(refrain)
(coda)