Music and Music Resources by Stephanie Douglass
Well hello. “Happy Birthday” is a great song for singing to anyone, especially on their birthday. 😉 It’s also great for learning which chords are related to each other, and for getting more fluent playing in different keys.
And many more…
This song is so much fun to sing because of its modal character. The chords move quickly, but it’s okay because they’re easy chords and there are only 3 of them (G, D7, em).
This is my favorite song to teach with only 2 chords!
Why did I chose to teach it C-G7 for this video? I seriously have no idea, because when I was teaching this to young kids it was much easier to teach this song using F and C7. Ah well. Maybe I’ll make an F-C7 version if there is demand.
Also included: Two strumming patterns!
This is “Blue Skies” by Irving Berlin. I love this song so much. I love the emotional meaning of the color blue (my favorite color), his use of mixed major and minor tonalities, and the melody itself of course. Kids love this song, too!
One of my favorite songs from childhood. Raffi is truly the master of the children’s song.
Have fun with this song that is an excellent example for teaching AABA form (both within the verses and in total) and a great introduction to The Beatles.
This song by Woody Guthrie is so good for kids – not only is the message and history so deep and nuanced, but the chord progression is easy to learn because if you lose your spot, you can always go back to C!
I finally made the video for this collection! Actually I made the collection, video graphics, and recorded the video many moons ago, but I didn’t like how the video looked so I re-recorded it and now have finally put it all together.
Songs include: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, You Are My Sunshine, Down by the Bay, This Land Is Your Land, Old MacDonald, Grandfather’s Clock, The Muffin Man, Frog Went A-Courtin, Mr. Sun, If You’re Happy and You Know It.
These images are for GCEA tuning – if you play baritone uke and know the chord shapes on your own, or if you just want to pretend you’re playing GCEA shapes, feel free!
In this post there are 2 chord pages for each ukulele tuning – GCEA and DGBE. It’s always tricky to find good kids’ songs with only 2 chords, so I hope you find this convenient!
