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Fun Songs for Kids

9/27/2021

Autumn days. Fall colors. The crispness in the air. School starting for the kids. I have always loved the changes in the seasons.

I am happy to see that somewhere Elementary School Chorus must be happening. With the pandemic still heavily present among us, I have been happily surprised to see that some of my Fun Songs for Kids have still been purchased. I assume for Children's Choruses around the country.

The three big winners so far this Fall have been "Jingle Bells for 2-Part Children," "Let Kindness Begin with Me" and "For This is Halloween."

"Jingle Bells" has been a perennial favorite for years. That's not surprising. "Let Kindness Begin with Me" has such a timely message and is so fun to sing for Children's Chorus that it is not very surprising it has been chosen, either. But I am always amazed at how well "For This is Halloween" does every year.

"For This is Halloween" began as a little finger play song somebody showed me once. She didn't know where it came from. We were doing a big Fall Festival and needed various "booths" to entertain the masses in areas around the perimeter of the gym and in classrooms around the facility. She asked me if I could do a Singing Room.

I had to come up with a bunch of songs that could entertain small groups, young and old, for ten minutes at a time. The songs had to be short, fun, active, and Halloween themed (but NOT scary!). We sang this one and a few others like "We are Out to Scare You" that worked perfectly.

Then another year, I decided to use "For This is Halloween" in a Fall school chorus performance. I added some extra interludes and utilized paper puppets on sticks of Halloween characters for the kids to hold up. Turned out so cute and the kids loved singing it.

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Janie Endings

9/13/2021

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Janie Thompson - Founder of BYU Program Bureau, Young Ambassadors, and the Lamanite Generation

When singing the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," the members of my family might suddenly break into a surprising finish. You see, we grew up singing a Janie Thompson arrangement of that song. That means, it had a "Janie Ending." When you are lucky enough to grow up in a performing family, you really can't sing any song straight. It's gotta have all of the right stuff including the flashy ending!

What is a "Janie Ending" you ask? Well, growing up, I just knew that whenever my aunt Janie taught us a song to sing, it was so much more fun than the regular version we might sing in school or hear on the radio. Janie made a song magical. The songs always included a memorable ending, usually jazzy or flashy, or big or just awesome.

(No, we didn't always use jazz hands! ... Ok, sometimes we just had to! )

It wasn't until much later in my life that I learned that a "Janie Ending" had an actual Musical term: TAG ENDING. It really just meant that some musical ideas included in the song were extended or repeated with flourish to create a memorable finish. I learned that composers and arrangers commonly used them. That made sense to me and also gave me a few frustrations.

That's when I learned that the published version of a song will undoubtedly NOT include the fancy fun stuff that I expected, including a TAG ENDING. And the songs were regularly simplified for the piano and put in un-singable keys. So frustrating!

In her younger years, Janie, also, was frustrated that the printed piano music of songs she heard played on the radio were never anything like what she actually heard on the radio. She would listen intently over and over to the songs so she could replicate the "real" versions to accompany herself and others as they sang. This helped her become very skilled at playing for herself to sing. Later, she used those skills to create her own arrangements of popular songs. And true to form, she created many memorable TAG ENDINGS.

You may call them TAG ENDINGS, but we still call them "Janie Endings."

Here is another song with a jazzy "Janie Ending" Jingle Bells.

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Fun Songs for Kids

Janie Endings

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