Recently one of the moms in our branch reported to me that the favorite song of her two daughters is "In the Leafy Treetops." "Oh", I said, "I have puppets for that song. I'll bring them and they can help me use the puppets to sing their favorite song." She then went on to tell me that her youngest daughter had finally admitted that she couldn't understand why all the flowers in the pretty garden were naughty. She was really bothered by that. If she, indeed, had a pretty garden, she was certain that her flowers would not be naughty. She was relieved by the explanation from her mom that the flowers were merely nodding in the wind.
There are so many funny stories like this of children misunderstanding the lyrics of the song. While it gives us adults a good laugh, as the chorister responsible for teaching the songs, we should really give some thought to ways that we can help the children really understand what they are singing.
Naughty flowers indeed! That's the best one I've ever heard. :O)
That's so cute! I sure like it a lot better than when the older boys change the words to songs on purpose.
ReplyDeleteMy dad used to tell the story of a girl who came home from church and was shocked to find that her family was having cherry pie with dinner because she'd learned that day that "Cherries hurt you". ['Cherish virtue' from 'Dearest Children God is Near You.'] =)
ReplyDeleteI just had to laugh at this when I read it. What a coincidence. Today I was teaching "Come, Follow Me" in Jr. Primary and we were singing and doing sign language for the phrase 'Then let us in his footsteps tread' when I noticed a girl had quite a puzzled look on her face as she was singing and looking at me. She finally blurted out, "Let us? Let us? Why are we putting 'lettuce' in his footsteps?" LOL Here I had tried to be so careful in explaining what each of the phrases meant as we went along. Little did I realize how some words next to each other might sound to those little, precious ears. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat's funny. I haven't heard that one before!
ReplyDeleteI had an older primary child, 9 or 10, think that the chorus for Away in a Manger said "A sheep, A sheep," instead of asleep, asleep.
My favorite one is in the song "Come Come Ye Saints." The child thought that it was saying "no toilet paper here!" instead of "no toil nor labor fear".
Gotta love this calling!!!
It's enough to make you roll on the floor! The kids are so funny. I can sympathize with Matilda too, boys can be pretty exasperating!
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