Children's Hospital

Sang at the Queen for a Day event at the Children's Hospital of Denver last Thursday. Happy/sad for me. I've had plenty of families in my classes who spent many nights/weeks at Children's and currently have a guitar student who's due to go in for surgery in a couple of weeks. So, it was something I wanted to do, but it's tough when you look around.

I mostly wound up playing for visiting family, but there were several patients, too, who were able to come downstairs by wheelchair or on their own. I didn't go up to the floors (have done that at Denver Medical Center and it is so rewarding, but so hard), but managed to sing with kids on and for about two hours. Draining but worth it. I gave out kazoos and a few CDs.

It was quite different from the shows and songwriting programs I did at Lafayette Library last week. On Tuesday morning I did shows for toddlers and preschoolers. And on Wednesday I did songwriting workshops with grade kids 1-3 and 3-5. What different song ideas they had! Wow! The younger group came up with so many upbeat titles that we decided to use them all (or as many as we could) in the body of the song. So, the song is called "The Greatest Library In the World" and is way fun. I'll put the lyrics up in a few days. Don't have them on this computer. The older kids' titles and ideas were way deeper than I though we would get. We wound up writing about the Purple Cats with a line, "So, you want to change the world." whoa. I put it to 12 bar blues in C and we gave it a little bounce. Yeah. I'll put those lyrics up next week, too. There was one verse we had trouble singing and when we finished I don't think any of us really wanted to keep it, but we didn't have time to scrap it and write a new one. Oh, well. Guess, I'll try to work on that next week. Need to work on the Library song, too. It definitely needs work - what do you expect from a one hour workshop? And, also want to work on the peanut butter song I wrote with the second graders at Horizon. I pretty much like it, but there are a few lines that could be stronger. And, it might need a bridge, but I'm not sure what to say in it. As I said, it need work. Here's what I/we have so far:

Nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut butter.
Nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut butter.

Open a new jar and see that swirl
You dive right in like a little squirrel
That nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut butter.

Give it to my dog, she licks it on her face
It gets in her fur and all over the place
That nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut better.

Put it on bread with jam or jelly
Nutella or honey to fill my belly.
That nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut better.

Eat it on apples or celery,
Crackers, Oreos, on anything for me.
That nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut better.

Nutty, smooth, chunky
Yummy peanut butter.
Peanut butter, peanut butter, …

Off to see Beauty and the Beast and take pictures of Becky's friends since she's at overnight camp and will miss all the shows.