Song and dance

Still wearing bits of War II Pacific army uniform, I got back to civvie life as teacher in sole charge of a one-room school.

It was two days travel by mixed means, from the nearest railway station.

Desperate to keep these wild children busy and learning to read and write for the next two years, and keep myself sane, I stumbled over the ancient idea of using music, song, rhythm and dance to teach with; it was the only “method” that worked with those kids.

We “sang” and thumped and jumped our way on home-made drums, through the numbers and words and history and geography I had set to wartime tunes - tunes they all knew from the radio.

Though self-taught and seriously deaf, oldest pupil Fat Maria pounded on the remains of a piano. She had to sit on two chairs.

Here’s my point. So successful were my amateurish [halfbaked] efforts in that isolated classroom long ago, that I still scan publishers’ lists occasionally, to see if a skilled publisher, teacher, writer, artist, and musician have got together to “bake” a SING AND LEARN series.

I see plenty of “songs for the classroom” sort of book, and for aiding the speaking of another language, and learning music itself, but so far no series integrated with a national curriculum to combine with other series to teach reading, ‘ritin and ‘rithmetic with the built-in aid of music.

It would make me happy to know of one.