Little Rabbit Foo Foo

In January I enrolled Sam in a “Music Together” class and in February she started a gymnastics class for 2.5-4 year-olds. Both classes require parent participation, so I have been able to follow Sam’s progress and see what she does and doesn’t like. Despite the fact that the gymnastics class is often a swarm of kids jumping and climbing and tumbling and butting in line, Sam loves it. She’s much more confident in her body and as I try to type this she is scaling the couch behind me and generally acting like a monkey.

A singing monkey, that is, because now she is singing a song about a ladybug, one that she learned in “Music Together.” MT is pretty intense and in my book pretty wonderful. The philosophy behind it is that all children are inherently musical and that the best ways for them to learn to sing in tune and keep a beat is by making music in a playful, musically rich environment with other adults and children of various ages. I sound like an advert for the program, don’t I? Well, I think it’s really sound. In the 10 week session we did, Sam and I learned a ton of songs from around the world, we got to play different percussion instruments, dance, and learn tonal patterns.

At home Sam staged music class with her dolls and bears and played the cd so many times that even her father learned all the songs.

So when we learned that we’d be coming to Brighton for a month I started searching around for similar classes for Sam. I couldn’t find any gymnastics classes that would take us on a drop-in basis, but I did find a music class in Hove that had room for us to join in for a few weeks.

Off we went last week to the first class.

Puppets, plushies, and props abound. There were balloons and toys. Most of the songs were nursery rhymes and the instructor told me afterward that she was impressed that I knew so many of them (at last my hidden talents are recognized!) There was a little bit of dancing, but only the children join in. Except for my child, of course. Sam was unsurprisingly reserved through the whole class, though she watched with rapt attention.

And when class was over, all the children are given biscuits (cookies) and cups of squash (diluted juice). Mums can have a cuppa for 20p or so. And people hang around the church hall for a while.

So very different from our American class. Except in one tiny way. When the instructor sang:

“Little Rabbit Foo Foo running through the forest,
Scooping up the mushrooms
And mashing them up for tea.”

Huh? The version I know is:

“Little Bunny Fou Fou hopping through the forest,”
Scooping up the field mice,
And bopping them on the head.”

In both versions, a fairy comes along and tells Foo Foo to stop scooping up mushrooms/field mice. Why it’s not nice to scoop up mushrooms and mash them up for tea is beyond me. Unless the mushrooms don’t belong to Foo Foo. Or maybe they’re a protected species. The P.C. nursery rhyme doesn’t elaborate.

I had to laugh at that, and then I remembered my surprise during the very first MT class when the instructor sang:

“Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care,
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care,
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care….
I’m gonna play today.”

And all of us parents singing along sang “My master’s gone away.”

Then we all laughed nervously and sang it the P.C. way.

Some things really are the same in both countries.