Home Schoolers at the Library

Each summer the Stillwater library chooses a top reader from each elementary school in town, plus one homeschooler, to receive a certificate for one free classroom visit by Monty Harper - that's me!

This year our home school winner is just getting ready to move out of state, so we quickly set up our visit at the library, earlier this week. The kids were great - and I love doing a more informal mini-concert with a small group. I look forward to visiting the other winners once school starts!!

Right now it's off to Arkansas for my very last summer reading program of 2012 - at the Bella Vista Library, 10:30 AM on Saturday (8/4/12). 

Group photo.

Here is our top reader, checking out the guitar after the program, with her "I Love Music" shirt on. Love it!

Classroom Visit at Richmond

Today I got to visit Mrs. Brown's 2nd grade at Richmond here in Stillwater; one of her students won one of ten visits I donate each summer to the Stillwater Public Library for summer reading prizes.

What a great group! We had a good time singing, laughing, and chatting. We did "Take Me to Your Library," "Silly Song," "Lisa Lee Elizabeth," and "The Cat Came Back."

Many thanks to Mrs. Brown for taking and sending these photos!

Skyline Visit

On Dec 10 I visited Mrs. McDonald's 1st grade at Skyline Elementary here in Stillwater; just now getting around to posting photos! This was another of the classroom visits I donated to the Stillwater Library to give as prizes for their summer reading program. We had a fun time, as always!

Here we're doing the Wind Energy song:

Posed together after the singing:

Happy holidays!

Classroom Visit in Perkins

The past three summers I've donated free classroom visits to the Stillwater Public library. They give them out as prizes to kids in the summer reading program. Last Friday I visited a 4th grade classroom in Perkins. Mrs. Ebers just sent me some of the photos that were taken.

Here I'm singing "Hard to Love a Reptile" by request. I always bring my lyrics binder in case I need to sing one I haven't done in a while.

These kids were fantastic singers! They really got into every song. We had a great time together.

Posing with the class.

Posing with the prize winner!

Thanks to Mrs. Eber's students for a great visit! I hope to see you again soon!

Sunnybrook

On Wednesday I visited two 2nd grade classrooms in two different schools, both to honor summer readers (see the previous post). These photos are from Mrs. Frost's second grade class at Sunnybrook Christian School. As you can see, we had a great time! 

Pretty Prairie

I spent the night in Wichita last night, so I could drive to Pretty Prairie, KS in the morning for a "Reading Celebration" program. Then I spent the day at Pretty Prairie meeting with smaller groups for Q&A and a bit of songwriting.

Thanks to librarian DeAnna Goering for taking these photos of me with the kids, and also for the cool illustration of my "Take Me to Your Library" song, which she hung in the hallway in preparation for my visit. All last week, apparently, kids were trying to figure out the meaning of the alien's speech balloon. When they finally heard me sing "Akbo ekto... " etc., it clicked - "Hey, that's what the alien in the hallway is saying!" Pretty cool!

Wish me luck - I have five more days in a row of performing this week, and my voice is already starting to give out, due to drainage down the back of my throat. Yuck!

Songbook, Bicentennial, and Broken G-String

Congratulate me - this is my 200th post to this blog! Man, I ramble prolifically.

Today I visited Evalyn's classroom and sang three and a half songs. The half because my last song was interrupted when one of my guitar strings broke. That's only the second time it's happened to me while performing, and the first in probably fifteen years! I'm just glad it wasn't during a show.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few days updating my online songbook. That's where I post the lyrics to all my songs. It isn't perfect yet, but it does list a lot more songs than it used to - I'm up to 107 songs now, organized by title, recording, and topic. Check it out!