Here’s a short video of some fireworks we saw last night and a photo of flags near the Empire State Building to help get you into the mood for the 4th of July…

Have a Happy July Fourth!

Mama Lisa

This traveling exhibition presents original illustrations from Little Golden Books. They celebrated their 65th anniversary in 2007. It includes 60 original illustrations from: The Poky Little Puppy, Tootle, Home for a Bunny, The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse, The Color Kittens, I Can Fly, and more. Check out the following link to see where the Golden Books Art Exhibit is currently touring.

My sister, Gwen, makes this wonderful blueberry pie every summer.  This blueberry pie recipe leaves most of the blueberries uncooked.  What’s so great about that is that you get the plumpness of fresh blueberries in your pie.  (It doesn’t have the gooey feel of a baked blueberry pie - that might be more appropriate for the cooler weather).  My sister’s pie is a very refreshing treat in the hot weather!

Blueberry Pie Recipe

Ingredients:

6 cups of Blueberries (2 1/2 pints) washed & drained
1/4 - 1/2 cup Cold Water
5 Tbsp. Flour or Cornstarch (we use flour)
Pinch of Salt 
1/2 - 1 cup Sugar (depends tartness of berries)
1/2 cup Water
10 inch Pie Shell Baked (My sister uses frozen - I used a Graham Crust in the photo above.)

1)  Wash and drain berries thoroughly. Mix together 1/4 cup cold water, flour & salt to make a smooth paste (add more water as necessary to make a smooth paste).

2)  Mix 1 cup blueberries, sugar,  1/2 cup water and paste in saucepan. Bring to a boil and stir until mixture thickens. Remove from stovetop to cool.

3)  When mixture is cool add remaining berries and put into already baked pie shell.

4)  Optional - top with fresh whip cream. Mix 1 pint of heavy cream with 2 - 3 Tbsp. of confectionary sugar and whip with mixer.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to my sister, Gwen Eichler, for sharing her recipe with us!

Mama Lisa

We visited a very kid friendly nature preserve today with a lovely garden.  The gardeners there were in the middle of planting a sensory garden, as a nice addition to their main garden.  A sensory garden should have plants that stimulate each of the five senses: smell, taste, sight, sound and touch.  Sensory gardens are wonderful for children to help them learn about the five senses.

Sight is easy in a garden…

So is smell.  They were planting mint…

Taste is pretty easy too.  They were planting blueberry bushes…

The sense of touch is pretty easy too.  You need to have safe plants to touch near the pathway.  Different textured leaves work nicely.  I noticed they were planting some ornamental grasses…

Now sound in a garden I find interesting.  They were planting something called Clethra Hummingbird.  The gardener I spoke to said it makes a crackling noise in the Fall.

Even if you don’t plant a full sensory garden, you can use these ideas in your garden, around your yard or on your balcony if you’re in an apartment, even on a windowsill.  It’s just another way to be creative in your life and think of things another way!

Check out Sensory Garden for Kids for more on building a sensory garden with children and Sensory Gardens which talks about other reasons to create a sensory garden (i.e. for healing, socializing, etc.)

Enjoy your gardening experience with all your senses!

Mama Lisa

Last month I posted several songs that originate from the period immediately after the slaves were freed in the US.  They came from a study of Slave Narratives that the US government did in the 1930’s, some of which are posted on Project Gutenberg. Recently Linda Austin wrote about what she read of the Slave Narratives on her blog Cherry Blossom Memories.  Linda gives an interesting summary of some of the Narratives from Arkansas.

It’s time to eat ice cream… with the warm weather here.  Why not make your own wet walnuts as a topping when there’s a special occasion?  I made some for tonight’s Father’s Day dessert:  Wet Walnuts over Vanilla Ice Cream…  My husband’s favorite!

I’m a strong believer in adapting recipes to your family’s tastes, so feel free to leave out the cinnamon from the recipe below, or change the recipe in other ways that suit you best. I’ll include notes at the end about possible adaptations.  We love cinnamon and found the little hint of it to be a nice addition to the wet walnut recipe below.

Ingredients

1 cup Walnuts
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/8 cup corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Chop up the walnuts…

3. Bake the walnuts in the oven on a cookie sheet or baking pan for about 12 minutes.

4. Mix together maple syrup, corn syrup and cinnamon.  Add in the walnuts once they’re done cooking.  Stir and voila!  You’re ready to eat!  Serve over ice cream.

Notes on adapting the recipe:  The corn syrup is optional.  It lightens the flavor of the maple syrup.  I mixed pure maple syrup with "pancake" syrup.  This gave it a lighter flavor too.  Some people add in a little ginger powder for a different flavor. You could also use less syrup if you want to be conscious of calories.  I’d say you could get away with using a total amount of 1/2 cup of syrup.  In that case your walnuts won’t be as syrupy.  However you adapt it, if you use these general guidelines above, it’s hard to go wrong with wet walnuts. You’re basically mixing walnuts and sweet syrup.  What can be bad about that?!

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

A Gobolink is like an inkblot, but it’s made for fun, not for psychological analysis!  To make a gobolink, you drop a little ink on a sheet of white paper. Fold the paper in half and press down the ink on the two halves of the paper.  Then you open the paper and you have a unified image. (You’ll have a mirror image on each side of the folded paper.) 

You can see an old book of these images online at the Library of Congress.  It’s called Gobolinks, or Shadow-Pictures for Young and Old, by Ruth McEnery Stuart and Albert Bigelow Paine. (New York: The Century Co., 1896).  The authors wrote poems and limericks to go along with their gobolinks.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the book…

The Tail of Taddy PoleThere was a little polliwog
His name was Taddy Pole.
He lived within a little bog
Beside a crawfish hole.

And all the day did Taddy play,
Around a sunken log.
Until he lost his tail one day,
And then he was a frog.

*****

The Faithful Notes

An old guitar once broke its strings,
And all the musical notes took wings;
They hurried away to lands afar
But two of them stayed with the old guitar.

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

In Africa wandered a yak;
A jaguar jumped up on his back.
Said the yak, with a frown,
"Prithee quick get thee down;
You’re almost too heavy, alack!"

Definition of a Limerick: A five line poem with the form AABBA, often humorous or nonsensical verse, popularized by Edward Lear.

Mohammed would like to know the title of the old Greek song that you can hear in YouTube video below and who sings it… Thanks!

Please let us know in the comments below or by emailing me at lisa@mamalisa.com -Thanks in advance! Mama Lisa

Friendship is no plant of hasty growth,
Though planted in esteem’s deep-fixed soil,
The gradual culture of kind intercourse
Must bring it to perfection.

By Joanna Baillie

"Crocodile Tears" is a poem that could be sung as a song.  The expression "Crocodile Tears" means an insincere show of emotions.  According to Wikipedia, "The expression comes from an ancient anecdote that crocodiles weep in order to lure their prey, or that they cry for the victims they are eating. They are fake tears."

Here’s the poem called "Crocodile Tears"…

Crocodile Tears

On the banks of the Nile an old crocodile
Lay sunning himself one day,
And he gently did croon an attempt at a tune,
As he watched some small children at play-
At play-
As he watched some small children at play.

He pondered awhile, and a hungering smile
Revealed the extent of his jaw;
He was twenty feet long, was uncommonly strong,
And his teeth were arranged like a saw-
Like a saw-
And his teeth were arranged like a saw.

He used every wile their hearts to beguile,
As toward them he stealthily stole;
He balanced each scale, and waggled his tail,
Then gobbled those children up whole-
Up whole-
Then gobbled those children up whole.

And such is the style of this old crocodile,
He sheds bitter tears o’er his prey;
He was filled with deep gloom when he thought of their doom,
And he wept all the rest of the day-
The day-
And he wept all the rest of the day.

Beware of a crocodile’s tears, better yet, beware of the crocodile itself!

Mama Lisa

PS The image is from "Grosses bêtes & petites bêtes", images and text by André-Hellé (Paris, 1912), with a little graphical editing by Mama Lisa.

Hello songs are a wonderful way to help children who are learning a foreign language. It’s also nice for children to always sing the same song at the beginning of a class. Hello songs are great for this.

The song below is called “Bonjour”. It’s a French hello song written and sung by Alain Le Lait. Sit back and enjoy the song by clicking the MP3 below. You can read along with the lyrics in French, followed by an English translation by Alain…

MP3 of Bonjour

Bonjour
(French Lyrics)

Bonjour, bonjour
Comment ça va?
Bonjour, bonjour
Très bien, merci
Je suis content d’être ici
Avec tous mes petits amis
Bonjour, bonjour
Comment ça va?

Merci, merci
Merci d’être ici
Merci, merci
Écoutez
Aimez-vous cette chanson?
J’espère que je suis dans le ton
Merci, merci
Merci d’être ici

Hello
(English Translation)

Hello, hello
How are you?
Hello, hello
Very well, thank you
I am happy to be here
With all my little friends
Hello, hello
How are you?

Thank you, thank you
For being here
Thank you, thank you
Listen up
Do you like this song?
I hope that I am in tune
Thank you, thank you
For being here.

The French and English lyrics to this “Bonjour” song are © 2003 Alain Le Lait.

Alain Le Lait is a French native who grew up near Paris, France. He moved to the United States in the 1970s and now lives in Colorado. Alain writes and performs easy to learn children’s songs in French, Spanish and English. Check out his site www.Yadeeda.com to hear samples of his music and to buy his CD’s or mp3’s. Soon we’ll be posting Alain’s version of Alouette!

Merci Alain!

Mama Lisa

PS Here are some other Hello and Goodbye Songs…

A third grader named Marisa taught me a hand clapping rhyme called “Hannah Banana”. It comes from a jump rope rhyme called “Anna Banana”. The lyrics to “Anna Banana” are:

Anna Banana
Plays the piana.
All she can play
Is the Star Spangled Banner.
Anna Banana split.

“Hannah Banana”, on the other hand, is a hand clapping rhyme. What’s interesting to me is that “Anna” switched to “Hannah”. We have two theories about why this might have happened. The first is simply is that “Hannah” is now a more popular name in the US than “Anna”. Children on the playground may have heard “Anna” as “Hannah” since the names sound so similar, and switched it. Our other theory is that “Hannah Banana” is somewhat close to “Hannah Montana”, the popular character from the children’s TV show. Children may have switched the rhyme to “Hannah Banana” based on that similarity. We may never know for sure why there’s now a version of “Anna Banana” called “Hannah Banana”, but it’s interesting to speculate.

Here’s the new rhyme “Hannah Banana”, with instructions for playing it and an mp3 of Marisa chanting it…

MP3 of Hannah Banana

Hannah Banana
Plays the piana
All she could play
Is split she’s an idiot.
(Repeat)

Istructions for Hand Clapping Game:

1st 3 lines of Rhyme:

1. Clap your own hands
2. Clap your partner’s hand diagonally
3. Clap your own hands
4. Clap your partner’s other hand diagonally
5. Repeat 1 - 4

Last line of Rhyme: Move feet out (like a little split).

Keep repeating the rhyme - each time moving feet out more on the last line – whoever falls over first loses.

Many thanks to Marisa for teaching me this rhyme and for chanting it for us!

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa Banana

Many children love Raffi’s music! I’ve just discovered something wonderful on his site… Raffi’s Lyrics and Scores - which include his specific arrangements to many of the songs he sings.

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

“My Shadow” is a wonderful poem by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94). It’s a great piece to share with your kids, grandkids or students! You can listen to it recited, by clicking the link below…

Listen to MP3 of My Shadow

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward, you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

People often write to us looking for the correct version of a song or rhyme. Monique Palomares, who I work with on the songs and rhymes that are posted on Mama Lisa’s World wrote the following about this topic…

Until mass media devices were available, songs were mostly passed down through generations by oral transmission. Some of them are known to have authors because we can track them back to a written document mentioning the authors’ names and how they wrote them. But most traditional songs are anonymous. Therefore, there were no set versions. People would adapt the songs to their own surroundings or would forget a word and sing another, swap verses or lines or add a new one. This is why there isn’t such a thing as “THE TRUE version” or “THE CORRECT lyrics”… when talking about anonymous traditional songs.

What seems to be for each of us “the true, genuine, correct…lyrics ” is the version we learned, generally when we were a child. So it’s “always” been that way for us in our heads.

Unless a song has an author who left a copy of his work, when a song/rhyme has variants, there is only a” MOST KNOWN/SPREAD version”. Some songs have tens of versions… so imagine all the nursery rhymes or finger plays that every mom sings to her baby, multiplied by all the mothers out there, multiplied by all the times they may sing them differently according to their sense of humor, the babies’ sense of humor…! (Check out the many versions of Ride Ride Ranke and you’ll see what I mean!)

Monique Palomares has translated most of Mama Lisa’s World into French and Spanish. You can see her translations on Mama Lisa’s World en français and Mama Lisa’s World en español.

The US government did a series of interviews with former slaves in the 1930’s. Project Gutenberg, has posted some of the interviews. They’re called “Slave Narratives - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves”.

I found some songs in one of the the interviews that I thought were interesting. Below you can read excerpts from the interview, plus the songs. It was done in February 1937 with Mrs. Fannie Berry, Ex-slave from Petersburg, Virginia. The first part of the excerpt is about what happened to Mrs. Berry after the slaves were freed…

Now, Miss Sue, take up. I jes’ like to talk to you, honey ’bout dem days ob slavery; ’cause you look like you wan’ta hear all ’bout ‘em. All ’bout de ol’ rebels; an’ dem niggers who left wid de Yankees an’ were sat free, but, poor things, dey had no place to go after dey got freed. Baby, all us wuz helpless an’ ain’t had nothin’.

I wuz free a long time ‘fo’ I knew it. My Mistess still hired me out, ’til one day in talkin’ to de woman she hired me to, she, “God bless her soul”, she told me, “Fannie yo’ are free, an’ I don’t have to pay your Master for you now.” You stay with me. She didn’t give me no money, but let me stay there an’ work for vitals an’ clothes ’cause I ain’t had no where to go. Jesus, Jesus, God help us! Um, Um, Um! You Chillun don’t know. I didn’t say nothin’ when she wuz tellin’ me, but done ‘cided to leave her an’ go back to the white folks dat fus own me…

Here Mrs. Berry told some songs. The first one I found interesting because it has the “kemo kimo” sound that we find in some versions of Froggie Went a Courtin (which has Ki-Me-O in it)…

…here’s another one we use to sing. ‘Member de war done bin when we would sing dese songs. Listen now:

SONG

Kemo, Kimo, dar you are
Heh, ho rump to pume did’dle.
Set back pinkey wink,
Come Tom Nippecat
Sing song Kitty cat, can’t
You carry me o’er?

(2)

Up de darkies head so bold
Sing song, Kitty, can’t you
Carry me O’er?
Sing Song, Kitty, can’t yo’
Carry me home?

Here Mrs. Berry talked about the war and mentioned a song from the end when the slaves were finally free…

I wuz at Pamplin an’ de Yankees an’ Rebels were fightin’ an’ dey were wavin’ the bloody flag an’ a confederate soldier wuz upon a post an’ they were shootin’ terribly. Guns were firin’ everywhere.

All a sudden dey struck up Yankee Doodle Song. A soldier came along [and] called to me, “How far is it to the Rebels”, an I honey, wuz feared to tell him. So, I said, “I don’t know”. He called me again. Scared to death [I was]. I recollect gittin’ behind the house an’ pointed in the direction. You see, ef de Rebels knew dat I told the soldier, they would have killed me.

These were the Union men goin’ after Lee’s army which had don’ bin ‘fore dem to Appomattox.

The Colored regiment came up behind an’ when they saw the Colored regiment they put up the white flag. (Yo’ ‘member ‘fo’ dis red or bloody flag was up). Now, do you know why dey raised dat white flag? Well, honey, dat white flag wuz a token dat Lee, had surrendered. Glory! Glory! yes, child the Negroes are free, an’ when they knew dat dey were free dey, Oh! Baby! began to sing:

Mamy don’t yo’ cook no mo’,
Yo’ ar’ free, yo’ ar’ free.
Rooster don’t yo’ crow no mo’,
Yo’ ar’ free, yo’ ar’ free.
Ol’ hen, don’t yo’ lay no mo’ eggs,
Yo’ free, yo’ free.

Sech rejoicing an’ shoutin’, you never he’rd in you’ life.

Yes, I can recollect de blowin’ up of the Crater. We had fled, but I do know ’bout the shellin’ of Petersburg. We left Petersburg when de shellin’ commenced an’ went to Pamplin in box cars, gettin’ out of de way. Dem were scared times too, cause you looked to be kilt any minute by stray bullets. Just before the shellin’ of Petersburg, dey were sellin’ niggers for little nothin’ hardly.

Junius Broadie, a white man bought some niggers, but dey didn’t stay slave long, cause de Yankees came an’ set ‘em free.

If you’re interested in reading more interviews, go to Project Gutenberg and look up “Work Projects Administration”.

Mama Lisa