A fun Goodbye song from Lelly and the Gang (an ESL story)

I've been having fun!
I taught a poem's emotional content- what is the speaker feeling?- with the help of my guitar, today. A poem has abstract thoughts that make one challenging, even to a reader who reads it in her first language. Imagine if it was written in a second language: how would you say how you understand its feelings, when you have just turned ten? ( It is "Guardian Angel" by Francisco X. Alarcon.)

I can't say I always feel I got the point across. But teaching any new concept is cool and fun.
You can be very entertaining, even you are teaching a foreign language (to a speaker in a language you barely understand- I am at a beginner level when, say, I speak in Chinese).
Who knows? This may help me :

Write things more clearly in English
Write material for children
...and show me things about childhood in other cultures!

As my friend Braband and my friend DAvid told me, I remind them of Mr. Rogers. With a touch of Negan on the side- in case of apocalypse.

So, I teach Say ABC twice a week. I also teach DaDA the other five days.
In SAyABC, we have this silly boat we use to go to different islands, which represent stations where you learn things in phases, like letters, vocabulary, phonics, usage.
I love the imaginary concept of me and the students and my charismatic animal helpers all boarding a boat and sailing across the waters.
At the end, on the Goodbye slide, you put the students into each window of the boat, and encourage them to etll you and one another, goodbye!

Well, my one student- I've yet to have all four slots filled for a class- was having some trouble with her computer. Meanwhile, I took her favorite color, Yellow, and made a song about what's coloured yellow, along with her name. I sit by the piano for Say ABC, to put me close to my router, for ethernet, so I like to introduce class with a song and a hello, as well as make a song halfway through that incorporates things we've learned (like orange, red, blue and green!).

So, poor Coco was disconnected. I waited. She made it back once, then, when we had only the Goodbye slide left, we got disconnected! Bummer! Just one more slide!!!

The IT person was enjoying my piano playing and encouraged me to keep making music to pass the time, so she could listen. I admit, this kept my spirits up. I stayed much longer than the class would've run- I didn't have another class, after all. So, I looked at the slide, and started picking up my helpers and putting them in the camera shot. Now, they would appear in each window of the boat, one at a time!

I used this to begin singing a jingle, as I like to do when I have the energy. It passes time and keeps me cheerful.

Sam and Jabot




Anne and Lelly

M
I sing, then Sam the Monkey sings. Lelly the Elephant sings, then Jabot Rabbit, Anne the Doll, then everyone.
I pecked out a bright major key tune!

Now, it took over an hour to get the piano part recorded right the next day, because I am out of practice and never was Mozart to say the least (more like MOrt's ARt).

Then I asked Angela DAwn, who created Lelly's voice originally as a voice she used to talk to our cat CAptain, to please sing the jingle. (Cap is trying to crawl up my arm right now- does he know I'm writing about him?)


I layered her attempt and another piano recording into my Audacity stacks of audio.

I did not sing them originally to a click track, and realize I could do them more precisely with a mixer, but...

do they not sound more like a classroom of children, in their boisterous, off-set way?


I can't wait to play it at the end of my classroom on Tuesday. :-D I may start using it for my other classes where appropriate.

I hope this is the first step I've taken in quite a while towards making some music just for kids. I think I'd do a whole online show, if I could pull the pieces of it together, with dubbed voices for the animals and everything.

Well, time to say goodbye!