Songwriting Continues With Richmond 4th Graders!

I've been writing songs all month (one 40 minute session per day) with the 4th graders at Richmond Elementary. We are down to our last week together, and the three songs are finished - one for each class: "Technical Hamburger," "The Battle of the Green-eyed Potato," and "The Ancient Chinese Pickle." 

It may sound like frivolous fun, but students practiced many different skills in the process of writing, including brainstorming, organizing ideas, teamwork, language skills, music skills, and critical thinking.

AND visual art! Chris Ramsay from the OSU art department and his students Kris and Leslie visited each class twice to help incorporate visual art into the writing process. Our first art project helped the kids visualize and focus their song ideas. 

The second art project is happening now. The kids are creating pieces to go along with their songs at the final performance and online (see the photos below)! Chris, Kris and Leslie put an incredible amount of work into this and it's brought a whole new dimension to the residency. Thanks you guys!

Each class will perform their song with me at the final concert this Thursday March 8 at 6:00 PM at Richmond Elementary here in Stillwater. The public is invited.

Soon after that I will post the final songs and artwork for you to enjoy. Stay tuned!

Thanks to Marie Wilson for taking these photos:

Chris Ramsay, head of OSU Art Department, on the floor making pickle minions with the kids!

I sing "The Ancient Chinese Pickle," trying out last minute changes, as 4th graders create their pickle minions.

Finished minions posted to the dry erase board.

Another class created living food figures for their song "The Battle of the Green-Eyed Potato."

Songwriting Begins With Richmond 4th Graders

This week I began working with 4th graders during their music time at Richmond Elementary! I'll help each of the three classes complete their own song over the next six weeks. This year I'm working with the art department at OSU to integrate visual arts into my process. The students will be doing an art project to help inspire their songwriting! 

Yesterday the whole fourth grade had music together so we could talk about what to expect.

I met with my first class today and we broke into small groups to brainstorm.

The kids were fantastic - they were very excited and got right down to work on lots of great ideas!

This residency is funded in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Arts Council. I'll post more as we progress!!

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!

Cedar Ridge in Tulsa

Thanks to Lori Mecke for sending in this photo of me with Principal Crager at Cedar Ridge Elementary Friday afternoon after the show! It was good for me to get out and perform, getting back into the swing of things after basically taking a semester off to make and release the new science CD. I've got another school show coming up later this month, and a bunch more stuff in the works, so you'll hear more from me soon. Also the new season of Born to Do Science starts this Saturday. I hope to see you there!

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!

Letter from Perkins

I used to get letters from kids quite often, but I rarely do these days. Last week I performed at Perkins Elementary, and the other day I received this letter from one of the students. Isn't this great?

Oklahoma School For the Blind

Howdy Dear Reader,

Long time no see. Clearly I lost steam on keeping up with blog posts this school year. Over the past two months I performed at Perkins, six schools in Ft. Worth, TX, Sangre Ridge here in Stillwater, Dale Elementary, Prague Elementary, Central High Elementary, Pioneer-Pleasant Vale, and Hollis. Before that I was doing workshops for librarians throughout Kansas and Oklahoma! The workshops were great fun, but kept me very busy. I will try to post a thing or two from all that activity, to catch you up.

Meanwhile I'm getting ready for a forty-four-show summer tour, plus a week at a camp in New York (with Evalyn)! And, I just posted a major new update to my website.

For now, here are some photos I found from back in October 2008 when I visited the Oklahoma School for the Blind in Muskogee. Many thanks to Barbara Collins for sending them in. Do you have any photos from recent Monty Harper shows? Send em and I'll post em! Thanks!

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! 

Calumet

I performed today at Calumet school for Pre-K - 6th grade. They were a great group. I'm posing here in the bottom photo with the two 5th graders who made me that great welcome banner!!

It was good to do another "CenTUNEial Celebration" - my first since the actual Centennial back in November.

Happy Pi Day, everybody!!!

Northwood Elementary

Arrrg - it's frustrating not being able to speak! Tomorrow I'll be singing "Oklahoma Annie" with Evalyn's first grade class during her school's weekly "Rocket Launch" assembly. It's their turn to be the featured class and Evalyn's teacher asked if we could do this. So I haven't spoken all day in order to hopefully let my voice recover, since I brought it home pretty shredded from my last two days of performing.


Friday I did three programs at Northwood Elementary in Seminole, OK, one each for 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. These were relatively small groups, gathered in the library. I did an abbreviated "Oklahoma CenTUNEial" program of four or five songs, with some question and answer and discussion of how I did the research and songwriting thrown in. These all went really really well. I enjoyed the extra back and forth with the kids.

The faculty fed me a wonderful potluck lunch and then it was off to Fort Smith, AK for a night in a hotel. I found it highly ironic that after a year and a half of songwriting, recording, and performing for the Oklahoma Centennial, on the evening of the actual event, I was off spending the night by myself in Arkansas. Ah, well.

Saturday morning I did two shows for "Breakfast With Santa" at the convention center in Fort Smith. Here I am with Santa and Mrs. Clause, and then with my four lovely assistants, who gathered kids for my show and then sat with them to help with participation.



My voice was might croaky for both Santa shows, but my host kindly claimed not to notice. And maybe she really didn't - people don't know what I'm supposed to sound like, and they often express surprise that I'm having any trouble with my voice. To me it sounds awful! But if I just power on as if nothing is wrong, my audience reacts about the same as usual.

I'm very thankful that my voice held out at all for the last of my November programs! Now I get a nice long break from touring while I contemplate bug songs for the Summer 08 reading programs.

Stoneridge in Piedmont and Sacred Heart in El Reno

I got through my morning show at Stoneridge in pretty good shape. By the afternoon, my voice actually felt a bit stronger. Let's hope that trend continues!

At Sacred Heart I performed for Pre-K through 6th grade. First to enter the room was a group of three-year-olds, and they were each carrying a paddle-shaped fan with my face on it and the words "Monty Harper Fan Club" on the back! I was flabbergasted, to say the least. They had been listening to my Jungle Junk cd, and were clamoring to hear "The Kid Who Ate a Bug."

Well, that song is not normally part of my "Oklahoma CenTUNEial" program, not to mention that the Oklahoma program isn't really designed for three year olds, so I wasn't sure how this would all pan out. But I was amazed at how sweet and well behaved those little ones were through the whole program, so naturally I tagged "The Kid Who Ate a Bug" to the end for them - how could I not?

Tomorrow, Northwood in Seminole, then Saturday it's "Breakfast With Santa" in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Ironically, after all the effort I've put into celebrating Oklahoma's centennial, which is tomorrow, I'll be spending that evening in a hotel room in Arkansas! Life is weird sometimes.

I won't get to post again until Saturday at the earliest, so I'll say it now:

Happy 100th, Oklahoma!!

Chisholm Elementary in Edmond

I did two shows today in Chisholm Elementary with my croaky voice. The kids didn't seem to mind that. Both groups were great participators and seemed to enjoy the show. The painting I'm posing in front of is just one of a dozen or so that cover the cafeteria walls. Very cool!

Three days to go...

Millwood and Cordell

I wish I could've been running a video camera from onstage during "The Wind Energy Song" at Cordell Elementary today! The kids did such a great job - it looked really cool. I did the next best thing and took a photo of the audience from the stage after the show. I also stopped at Thomas on the way home and took some photos of the wind farm that stretches along Highway 40 right there. So you can combine the two photos in your imagination!

Oh, man, I have nightmares like the way today started out, where I have a show about to start while one thing after another keeps me from getting there to set up. Meanwhile the audience is arriving...

I'll give you the quick version: I got lost on the way to the school, got lost in the wrong building, got lost in the right building, and got lost looking for the auditorium. By the time I carted my sound system into the room to set up it was five minutes to showtime and the Pre-K were already seated.

But my contact person at Millwood was great and we got it all sorted out.

Then there was the run in with the police (wrong way on a one way street) and the misbehaving sound system at Cordell, plus my voice nearly giving out. But as you already saw, that one turned out well in the end.

I don't think I've ever had such a string of bad luck on one day! Wish me good luck for the next four!

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!

Geary, Oklahoma, Geary, Oklahoma, Geary Oklahoma

I had a fun time in Geary, OK today. I performed for PreK-4th, then after lunch I met with three small groups to talk about songwriting and share some extra songs. The 3rd and 4th grade group seemed especially interested and we got into all sorts of details about the mechanics of creating melody.

Tomorrow Duncan, and twelve shows next week!

P.S. Here's a photo of "Annie," a puppet named after the pony in Evalyn and my song, "Oklahoma Annie"!

Lisa and I Visit Evalyn's Class + A Buffalo at Sooner Elementary

Yesterday Lisa and I visited Evalyn's first grade class at Richmond. Lisa usually goes in on Tuesdays to read to the kids. Here's a rare photo I took of her in action!

I came along with Lisa yesterday to rehearse "Oklahoma Annie." Evalyn and I were asked to lead the class in a performance of our song for the opening assembly coming up Monday the 19th.

Today I performed my Oklahoma program for two enthusiastic groups at Sooner Elementary in Moore, OK. Here I am, posing with the buffalo that greets visitors in the front foyer.

Tomorrow I'm in Geary, then Duncan on Friday; next week, six days in a row of programs! The centennial is the 16th. After that I get a break from performing for a while, and I plan to do some writing and recording, plus catching up on all kinds of things...