EDU Review
The latest trends in education and parenting July 10, 2014
Ever watched a musical and imagined yourself on stage, under the hot lights, your face thick with melting grease paint, the sound of many hands clapping, roses thrown at your feet? You’ve got it bad, Kid. You’re hooked on musical theater.
And if you’re hooked on it, you’ve been singing all your favorites for years, sometimes accompanying your solos with dance moves copied to a T after watching your favorite musicals so many times you’ve lost count. Guess what? That means your kids know all your favorites just as well as you do and chances are they’ve inherited your love for the genre.
If musicals are a part of your family dynamic, things just got even better. Or at least easier. THIS website offers all the lyrics to all of the songs from some of our favorite musicals, for instance, The Sound of Music. You’ll never have to guess those lyrics again. On the other hand, the website is woefully remiss in not offering the lyrics to Rock Island from Music Man, everyone’s favorite musical scene. Never fear, you can find the lyrics to Rock Island HERE.
Ever wonder about the process of writing songs for musicals? What comes first? The script or the songs? Do they write the lyrics and then compose the melodies? Or is it the other way around?
If your children or you are fascinated by these and other musical theater questions, we’re betting you’ll find this NPR segment about lyricist Sheldon Harnick fascinating. The segment is kind of like outtakes for movies, only instead of outtakes, these are songs written for musicals that ended up on the cutting room floor. Did you know that Lazar Wolf, the butcher from Fiddler on the Roof, originally had a solo? You get to hear that late lamented song in the segment and you also get to hear why the song was dropped from the show, HERE.
Next, see which one of you can guess the highest number of musical anagrams in the shortest amount of time, HERE. You may have the advantage over your child for knowing the older musicals, while your child may just have the edge over you for knowing some of the newer musicals. If you and your child register, you can set this up as a challenge game for two.
Still in a gaming mood? See how many of these top 100 Greatest Musicals you’ve viewed. You may disagree with some of the choices, or at least the order in which they’ve been chosen. These lists are always kind of subjective, of course. We definitely would have placed The Sound of Music or An American in Paris WAY before Mary Poppins, for crying out loud. Still, it’s fun to see how many you know and you can actually check off the musicals you’ve seen by clicking on the boxes. Take the Greatest Musicals Challenge HERE.
Last but not least, here’s a treat for the star-struck: a master class in which Stephen Sondheim teaches Send in the Clowns. After that, there’s not much more to do than watch a bunch of your old favorites, one after the other. Make sure you’ve stocked lots of popcorn!
Join us again here in this space, next week, for more summer fun at EDU Review. We exist to help you combat the plaintive summer cry, “Mooo-oooom, there’s nothing to DO.”
It’s what we do.
Oh, and while we’ve got you: It’s here! The Kars4Kids Safety app, the parents’ helper that keeps babies safe. Free download.
About Varda Epstein
Varda Meyers Epstein serves as editor in chief of Kars4Kids Parenting. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Varda is the mother of 12 children and is also a grandmother of 12. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Learning Site, The eLearning Site, and Internet4Classrooms.