Sharks!: A very upbeat song that manages to reflect on the fact that Sharks have a lot more to fear from us than we have to fear from them…
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The Silkie: My own adaptation of an old Irish story about magic seals that incidentally also shows up in the Eskimo/Inuit tradition.
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Sail Away: The Ballad of Nathaniel Bowditch: A Story song about the self-taught “Father of Modern Navigation” whose manual is still published by the US Government.
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If I had a Boat: Just a fun song about…if I had a boat!
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Humpback Whale Song: A song about whales written with a class of 5th graders.
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Navigation: a rap about navigation written with a different class of 5th graders.
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Just the above songs are plenty for a one hour program! What I usually end up doing is performing three or four of the songs along with one of the following stories. The stories each use a lot of cool sound effects instruments played by the audience.
Stories:
Raven Stops the Rain (Siberia) this is a creation Myth that explains how Universe created the rain, the
Mark Shepard sings "The Silkie" w help of young audience volunteer
thunder, the wind and the ocean. As well as everything else. Raven ends up being the one to regulate the weather…(I usually do this story for the younger grades)
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Skeleton Woman (Inuit) A young woman refuses all suitors in her village until a mysterious man all dressed in white arrives from the North. She leaves her home to follow him. He turns out to be a polar bear and she undertakes a journey of profound transformation underneath the frozen Arctic Sea. (I usually use this story for 3rd graders on up to adult audiences..)
