Sunday, August 24, 2008

Kid-Friendly Music That Adults Can Stand

I have discovered something miraculous: music that my kids *and* my husband enjoy. Hubs is extremely picky, and professes strong dislike for many of the kids' CDs that I actually enjoy (and I'm rather selective myself). But after I dragged him with us to a wonderful concert at our church last weekend, he actually requested one of these CDs to play on his laptop while he was hanging out with the kids (I was enjoying a lovely bit of solitary reading time while this happened).

Roger Day came to perform at our church, and since I was Roger's contact at the church, I dragged Hubs along and persuaded him to pitch in with set-up and break-down for the event. So Hubs chatted with Roger before and after, and he was there to see how much our kids and all of the others who attended loved the show. And Hubs will now listen, willingly and without complaints, to Roger Day CDs.

One of the things I like best about this music is the silly-factor. The lyrics aren't preachy or pedantic; they just encourage kids to move around and sing along and act silly. Two of my favorites are "It's a No-No to Kiss a Rhino!" from Ready to Fly and "Roly Poly" from Dream Big! You can hear samples from all three of his CDs on his website, and he also has the lyrics posted there as PDF files.

Roger also wrote some of the music for the Vacation Bible School curriculum that we used last summer, and those songs translate the fun quality into a more Christian-focused message (he has written songs for a number of the Cokesbury curricula in recent years, so if your kids have been to a VBS that used Cokesbury materials, they may have heard some of his songs - Big Girl is still singing some of the Beach Party songs from this summer). These VBS songs are great, but I really think his genius shines in his own CDs.

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