You all know how that song goes right?
There was an old lady who swallowed a flyWhen Attila and I were at our early childhood class yesterday, the teacher sang
I don't know why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die.
"perhaps she'll cry" for the last line.
Yeah, I would think so! But that is not how the song goes!
I really hate this kind of watering down for children. I don't think using "die" in this context is scary at all, it's just a song. Not to mention that 2 year olds really have no concept of death anyway. It wasn't until I was a quite a bit older that I realized a lot of nursery rhymes are pretty creepy. Now, I am all for removing racial prejudice from songs and nursery rhymes. But I think the occasional mention that if you swallow insects and farm animals whole you will die is a good lesson for the very young to learn. (also going to bed and bumping your head, don't do it.)
The teacher had an old lady puppet thing and she let all the kids have one of the felt animals to feed to the old lady. Attila got the horse, which is the last animal the old lady eats. (She's dead of course, she swallowed a horse- Dire warning-Don't swallow a horse!) By the time it was her turn to feed the old lady, Attila was having none of it. She ran up there and threw her horse at the old lady's gaping maw. No way was she going to get close enough to get eaten herself!
That's my smart girl.
6 comments:
*chuckle* Smart girl.
Possible Attila mental process:
"Hmmm, this lady is eating all kinds of animals, and they keep getting bigger... maybe she's a zombie and she'll try to eat me!!! Don't get too close!"
And it's never to soon to teach your kids to stay away from zombies!
Too funny. I also agree with you on the watering down thing. It's like those stupid "competitions" where there aren't any winners. Palh-leez!
I was putting together a playlist of songs to play with Sprout and I ran into this one, the Pete Seger version. Its even better. I guess she'll die. Not even perhaps. We will not be changing the lyrics in my house.
And yay Attila, getting eaten by crazy old ladies is bad.
Come to think of it, maybe this song was written by a member of PETA.
Giggle! Smart girl Attila. I'd stay away from that lady too.
I agree that some of this song changing is getting WAY out of hand. If we happen to read an older version of a nursery rhyme we have a discussion about it (if it's biased in some way). Although I DO like the Jack and Jill jumped over the candlestick.
In teachers defense it's probably because some jerk yelled at her/him endlessly so she/he watered down the song. In real life the teacher might completely agree...just not enough to take the as*#)&s yelling.
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