I haven’t written about my daughter in a little while, so I thought I’d share a little story today. When we woke up yesterday morning my little girl was humming a little tune. She was saying “Adda..adda.. racka”. It was cute but I wasn’t really sure what she was saying. As she continued to sing, however, I realized she was singing Queen’s We Will Rock You, a song that anyone that has attended a sporting event in the United States in the past twenty years knows all too well.
Now, I’m a big fan of Queen, but I haven’t really played any of their music for my daughter to hear. For a while, I had no idea where she was getting this song. Then I remembered Donkey Konga, the Nintendo Gamecube game we play, has We Will Rock You in it.
Donkey Konga is really a pretty cool game. You use a bongo drum as a controller and try to drum to the song. Every now and then we play this game and our daughter dances along to the music. It just amazes me she remembered “We will rock you” from the game as we haven’t played it in a week.
It’s just amazing how easy it is for us all to retain information in song form, even at 17 months old.
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How cute.
Great song. I need to work on getting that one into our kids singing around the house rotation.
There’s a reason why nursery rhymes are so popular with kids. They are very metrical little creatures.
When are kids were old enough to crawl up the stairs by themselves, we used to try to herd them up the stairs for bedtime. They of course looked at us like we had sprouted antennaes. Then we started to sing some goofy little song along the lines of “Up up up the stairs we go/It’s time to go up the stairs we go.” To this day more than three years later, the kids will still sometimes sing versions of that song as they walk up stairs.
SzélsőFa – Thanks
Mike – That going up the stairs song is an excellent idea. Thanks!
We went for a while to a Waldorf-based school for preschool (till they got too spooky cult for us) and they showed us how great singing is for lots of things with kids. Washing hands, we always do the alphabet (ensures long enough time to remove grunge) or “Wash the fronts, wash the backs, wash your little paddy whacks!” Rubber ducky song from Sesame Street for the bath, naturelment, and others. As for the kids singing, they are lovers of repetition for sure, as I vividly recall listening to “Doctor Foster went to Glouchester in a shower of rain..” for hours (it seemed) driving through the Frech countryside this summer. They do sometimes get the words wrong, as in “he stepped in a puzzle right up to his muzzle”, vs puddle and middle, which was very cute. Reminds me also of the SF Chronicel columnist Jon Carroll, who does columns sometimes recording the misunderstood lyrics of songs, sent in by his reader, as in the Jimi Hendrix lyric,”’scuze me, while i kiss this guy!”
That is so cute!! Kikzy seems to like rock music too. He gets transfixed by guitars. The other day we were listening to music. I switched it off before we left the house and he waved at the CD player and said: “Bye-bye, ‘tar!” I realised he was calling the music “‘tar” his word for guitar!
It is amazing what they retain.
We went to live in Kuwait for three years, just after my first son was born. I won’t even begin to tell you what my son’s name for the call to prayer, (which interrupted the children’s cartoons every night on TV) was. It would probably cause an international incident. Let’s just say it was a three year old’s translation of what they were singing. And very rude….
I think I know what Diane’s son’s translation was! I lived in Bahrain from ages 3 to 5 and my brother and I had our own word for the call to prayer too – we honestly thought that was what they were saying. I’m guessing it was the same thing because, erm, it was none too polite!
Haha! Bound to be the same thing..how funny!
Really adorable. I love this kind of thing. Such innocence…so endearing!
mary