The sound of Christmas
I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God, despite a churchgoing childhood. Though I lack a Christian faith now, I do have a passion for the hymns and carols that I heard each week. Sunday School ended in time for us to file quietly into pews at the front of the church for the last…
Getting it wrong
Sometimes I notice that we are not singing the same words, such as in Wind the Bobbin up. There are even certain songs where we sing slightly different tunes. If Rhymetime were a performance, this would be a disaster. But it’s not. I love the way we all have learnt our own versions, from our…
Donkey voices welcome
Rhymetime is an activity you do together. Each week your voice and your child’s voice join the greater sound that we make as a group, whether you are singing, laughing, blowing your nose or yawning. But some people feel very self-conscious about their singing and they tell me that they really do have a ‘bad…
I need new music!
Perhaps you’ve bought all three Rhymetime CDs, and listened to them on loop for weeks on end. You might want some other music for a change. I’ll let you into a secret. A couple of years ago I made some of the music on my blog available to buy or even just to stream. So that’s…
What’s Rhymetime? A musical comfort blanket.
Parents often come to Rhymetime saying that they need to learn new songs, and new verses, but actually I think we all have a memory bank of songs in our brains, tucked away, ready to be revitalised. Those songs we learned as children, with our parents or at school, are usually bursting to get out.…
Again? Again!
“Twinkle, please!” If I don’t sing Twinkle, twinkle little star at Rhymetime, someone small always comes up to me at the end and asks me to put that right. These children know that repetition is good, and we adults sometimes forget this. Coming together and singing the same songs, week after week (and again at…
