Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for Get Up Christmas Mornin' & Get Up in the Mornin'.

Stream or Purchase the Get Up in the Mornin'  tracks from many streaming sites including: Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer.

Donna & Andy have yet to record Get Up Christmas Mornin'.

The Blue Skies and Pirates CD and tracks (Donna & Andy performance and instrumental tracks - 24) are available for download or physical CD on this website.

Get Up Christmas Mornin'

I was taking my son to a Scout Jamboree in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada. 14,000 Scouts from all over Canada were converging at a massive camp site for a week-long event. As we were heading to the camp on a bright and sunny day, the melody and the first verse of the song popped into my head. I started to sing as we walked from the parking lot to the central gathering location (it was quite a hike so I had some time!) My son has camped in some pretty uncomfortable weather conditions. He always had lots of stories to tell, but he really didn’t complain about the weather. He seemed to enjoy the challenge of surviving even rainy and snowy camping trips. He didn’t get that from his mother. I prefer to be protected from heat, cold, bugs and hard ground when I sleep. Despite my personal preference to avoid being involved in bad weather, I thought it made sense to include the advice not to be saucy to Mother Nature. At the end of the day, being grumpy doesn’t change the weather conditions but a good attitude can go a long way to improving the outlook of the situation.

A few years later, our Donna & Andy duo was invited to sing at a Christmas event. We were practicing some standard seasonal tunes when we started to change the lyrics of Get Up in the Mornin’ to fit in with getting up on Christmas morning. We sketched out alternate lyrics that worked for that concert and I include them with the original words so teachers can have an option for school and vocal studio Christmas concert presentations. The admonishment not to be grumpy or sassy also works in the context of staying off the naughty list!  

When you have enjoyed singing this song with your students - please drop by again and leave a Review on this page. Thanks!

Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for Get Up in the Mornin' & Get Up Christmas Mornin'.

Stream or Purchase from many streaming sites including: Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer.

The Blue Skies and Pirates CD (Donna & Andy performance and instrumental) tracks (24) are available for download or physical CD on this website.

Get Up in the Mornin'

I was taking my son to a Scout Jamboree in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada. 14,000 Scouts from all over Canada were converging at a massive camp site for a week-long event. As we were heading to the camp on a bright and sunny day, the melody and the first verse of the song popped into my head. I started to sing as we walked from the parking lot to the central gathering location (it was quite a hike so I had some time!) My son has camped in some pretty uncomfortable weather conditions. He always had lots of stories to tell, but he really didn’t complain about the weather. He seemed to enjoy the challenge of surviving even rainy and snowy camping trips. He didn’t get that from his mother. I prefer to be protected from heat, cold, bugs and hard ground when I sleep. Despite my personal preference to avoid being involved in bad weather, I thought it made sense to include the advice not to be saucy to Mother Nature. At the end of the day, being grumpy doesn’t change the weather conditions but a good attitude can go a long way to improving the outlook of the situation.

A few years later, our Donna & Andy duo was invited to sing at a Christmas event. We were practicing some standard seasonal tunes when we started to change the lyrics of Get Up in the Mornin’ to fit in with getting up on Christmas morning. We sketched out alternate lyrics that worked for that concert and I include them with the original words so teachers can have an option for school and vocal studio Christmas concert presentations. The admonishment not to be grumpy or sassy also works in the context of staying off the naughty list!  

When you have enjoyed singing this song with your students - please drop by again and leave a Review on this page. Thanks!

Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for My Chihuahua.

There have been a variety of dogs in my life, mostly family pets I remember from when I was a young child. Dogs were useful on our family farm but we also regarded them as beloved family members. Most of our dogs were larger and family and friends also had large dogs such as German shepherds, Irish setters and Labrador retrievers, to name a few. The one exception was the small chihuahua owned by my aunt and uncle. “Cleo” was a short-haired little dog with protruding eyes and a jaunty little tail. I remember Cleo’s little toenails clicking on the floor when my uncle would get him to dance for us.  

As an adult, I also had the opportunity to meet Diago, a feisty chihuahua who truly lived up to his name. He had a sturdy, wide chest (for a chihuahua) and short stubby legs. His best trick was when his owners would say “Sing, Diago” and he would plant his feet, throw back his head and howl in a most impressive operatic style. He had a big voice for a little dog! I don’t think he understood that he was the smallest individual in the room, and if he did realize that, I am sure it didn’t matter to him at all. He was a fun chihuahua with lots of confidence!

It was good to be able to tap into all this dog experience when writing My Chihuahua, but one might wonder why I chose that topic at all. I had written about a pet hamster (Pickles) after a request from my friend, Nikki Loney at Full Voice Music. A voice teacher who had used Pickles with her students contacted Nikki asking if she might be able to have a chihuahua song written. In turn, Nikki contacted me just in case it might spark an idea for a song. I jotted down the idea in one of my song-idea notebooks and every now and then I would push around lyrics that I thought might work, but I didn’t ever really work on it seriously. I finally got around to writing the song two years later! My Chihuahua is a fun and spicy little song, and I think Diago would approve.

When you have enjoyed singing this song and doing the activities with your students - please drop by again and leave a Review on this page. Thanks!

Please send us your performing video - we might be able to post it on this page!

Sing more dog songs written by Donna Rhodenizer

• It's Raining Cats and Dogs
• I Got a Sister (but I wanted a dog)
• Cyril, the Sausage Dog
• Cat and Dog Canons
• Dogs Hide Bones (singing game) (included in New Singing Games for Young Singers Vol. 1 & Vol. 2)

Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for Computer Cat.

Stream or Purchase from many streaming sites including:

Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer.

The Computer Cat  CD (Donna & Andy performance and instrumental) tracks (24) are available for download or physical CD on this website.

10 Cross-curricular activities are provided in the PDF download extending the focus of this song to other subject areas including:

• Fine arts: music, visual art, drama, dance
• Language arts
• Math
• Technology

Computer Cat is one of my early songs. It was written in the mid 1990s as a result of a question posed by my six-year-old son, Daniel. He had seen me using the computer (or maybe he was using one himself at that point) and he said, “Mom, what would happen if the cat ate the mouse for the computer?” This was an interesting thought and evoked amusing images and it was a great foundation for a fun song. Cats are not known to be particularly cooperative at the best of times. I envisioned the necessity of chasing and catching the cat when it was time to do computer work and then the trouble of convincing it to agree to being pushed around on the desk. The issues of static electricity and being ticklish would certainly create some tension!

It is amazing to me that almost 30 years after writing this song, I can look back and see how much technology has changed since the song was originally written. Many of the computer innovations of the 1990s have been replaced and replaced again in the ensuing years. What we thought was leading-edge technology (which it was at the time) now looks very antiquated. Computer Cat still has appeal as a humorous song, although it may require a bit of historical context for young singers who wonder what a mouse and pad have to do with using a computer!

When you have enjoyed singing this song and doing the activities with your students - please drop by again and leave a Review on this page. Thanks!

Please send us your performing video - we might be able to post it on this page!

Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for these Four Penguin Songs

You can purchase each Penguin song separately.

• I Wonder
• Penguin Parade
• Pondering Penguins
• The Penguin Ball

Save 25% when you purchase all Four Penguin Songs together.

Stream or Purchase the Four Penguin Songs from many streaming sites including:

Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer.

The Computer Cat  CD (Donna & Andy performance and instrumental) tracks (24) is available for download or purchase physical CD on this website.

53 Cross-curricular activities are provided in the PDF download (divided over 4 penguin songs) extending the focus of these songs to other subject areas including:

• Fine arts: music, visual art, dance, drama,
• Language arts
• Math
• Social studies
• Science
• Technology

Four Penguin Songs

I wrote my collection of penguin songs as a result of a request made by a classroom teacher at my school. She was doing a penguin unit with her students and she asked me for a penguin song.  I didn’t know any, so I wrote my own! When her students came to my music class they told me lots of penguin facts to give me ideas for my songs. I discovered that penguins are amazing creatures. The conditions in which they live and the way they survive, live, and raise their babies are all fascinating. With all the facts I found out, I ended up writing four penguin songs.

Some of the songs rely on the facts that the students told me, but other songs in the set dive into the world of imagination with penguins checking their closets for clothing options, attending the ”penguin ball” for some romantic moonlit dancing on the beach, or having a parade in the snow. All in all, I had a grand time writing these four songs and the students enjoyed singing them. After almost three decades, I am happy to report my penguin songs are still being sung and enjoyed by young singers (and their audiences) around the world!

When you have enjoyed singing these Four Penguin Songs, and doing the activities with your students - please drop by again and leave a Review on this page. Thanks!

Please send us your performing videos - we might be able to post them on this page!