The other week while I was working on a Halloween project, I started humming a favorite Halloween song. This got me thinking back to how much fun we would have in our elementary music class learning new songs.  In our school, we would hold assemblies for Thanksgiving, Christmas, parent nights, welcome back to school nights.  In first grade we performed The Little Red Hen play; in second grade it was The Elephant's Child.  And, each year we would have our Christmas Program were each grade would perform the three or four songs they had learned. As I was happily thinking about my fun elementary days and all the fun our teachers did, I started making a mental list of songs I am going to teach my children for sure.
1. Have You Seen the Ghost of John
2. Must Be Santa
3. All the songs from The Little Red Hen, especially Who will Help Me?
4. All the songs from The Elephant's Child
5. Zero the Hero
6. Froggy Went A'Courting (My first grade class loved this song so much that we made Mrs. Denzer let us do it as a play in music class.  We practiced for hours so it was perfect!)
7. Fly Eagle, Fly (or whatever it was called. Mrs. Eaton made us practice it in choir over and over and over)
8. Jimmy Crack Corn
9. Up on the Rooftop
10. Jump Jim Crow (not a song we learned in school, but one they'll learn anyway even if it is politically incorrect.  I didn't know what it meant for a long time)