We (Milton Hide) were pleased to work with the children of Grovelands School as part of Hailsham Festival 2024. We went into the school on Wednesday 11th September for an hour in the morning and worked with a group of 8 children (with the teaching assistant present) for one hour. We started with introductions and sang them a quick rendition of our song, The Old Man of Coniston, several of them joining in with clicking their fingers. We then asked some leading questions, starting with a suggestion from the Head Teacher of ‘What exciting things did you do on holiday?”. This brought out some interesting results which we started adding to the board. Nature seemed to be a recurring theme so we discussed which animals we could include in the song, then what time of day and weather should feature and they fired some excellent descriptive words at us. All of this went onto the white board and a song idea started to form about someone paddling a boat in various parts of the world and seeing and hearing interesting animals and things on their way. Between us, with each child having an input, we worked out the first 4 lines.
Jim started noodling a tune on the guitar while the children chose from the wide array of percussion instruments in the music room where we were working. We then decided together on the ‘feel’ and beat of the song. Then it was time to start singing the first lines and they all threw themselves into it! Once we had a tune, the rest of the words came quite easily – the pumpkin story (‘Dad tripped while we were picking pumpkins once and got one stuck on his head’) changed to be a monkey falling out of a tree and getting a banana stuck on his head. It was brilliant working with such imaginative minds and we could have gone on to write several more verses if we had more than just one hour.
We had a couple of runs though of the song, adjusting words and adding in repeats, then a final practice before they had to get back to class. Later that evening, we returned to the school for a free public performance of several of our songs alongside an exhibition from Arlington Pop Up Museum about stories. The children all (except one who had dance class) returned with their families to join in with the new song. Six of them got up in front of the audience of about 40 people and, after only one quick run through in the corridor, sang the whole song and played their percussion instruments brilliantly, all improvising some animal noises in the instrumental break. It’s a song we will treasure forever because of how it came about.
Paddling Along
by Grovelands School Pupils and Milton Hide
I paddled along one sunny day
Sparking water came my way
(rpt)
Red shimmering fox went gracefully
Over the stepping stones
(rpt)
I paddled along the Amazon
Chittering chattering all around
(rpt)
A cheeky monkey hit the ground
Banana on its head
(rpt)
[Instrumental break with improvised animals noises such as monkey, elephant, dog, duck, donkey, cheetah, lion, frog, bat, fox, whale….]
I paddled upon the crashing waves
And put my head into the sea
(rpt)
A whale swam by an old shipwreck
With a twinkly shoal of fish
(rpt)
