Follow along with the lyrics as you listen to the accompaniment with melody guide for Pondering Penguins

Here are 3 more penguin songs for fun singing in your home school, classroom, vocal studio or choir. 

• Penguin Parade
• I Wonder
• The Penguin Ball

Purchase all Four Penguin Songs together and save 25%

Stream or Purchase from many streaming sites including: 

Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer - to name but a few. 

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

13 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
• Physical Activity
• Social studies
• Technology

Expressive singing

• Read the lyrics aloud to discover the descriptive words that will be highlighted as you explore the art of expressive singing.
• Discuss how to use clear consonants and rounded vowels to sing the words expressively.
• Use dynamics to create the mood changes that occur in the story of the song.

Create a Penguin Presentation

Create a presentation for invited guests (family members, administrators, another class).
Sing all four of Donna’s penguin songs:

• I Wonder (a jaunty “boom chick”’ style song)
• Penguin Parade (a march)
• Pondering Penguins (a country line dance)
• The Penguin Ball (a waltz)

Add costumes.
Have students share penguin facts between each song.

   PDF download includes breakdown of activities accommodating specific grade levels

      e.g. recorder part, movement, melody variants

Pondering Penguins is one of four songs that I wrote at the request of a teacher at my school who was doing a penguin unit with her students. She wanted to augment her unit with some songs and I agreed to write something for her. When her students came to their next music class with me, they had many great penguin facts to tell me. In Pondering Penguins I included lots of the facts the students had told me: penguins cannot fly, they love to dive and swim, they have special feathers that help keep them warm, the father penguin holds the egg on his feet to keep it warm until it hatches, and they have a call that is not very musical by human standards. I ended up writing four penguin songs for them. I wanted to write each penguin song with different musical styles. Pondering Penguins ended up with a country shuffle feel and we created a line dance to go with it. I had great fun creating my set of penguin songs and the students had great fun singing them.

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Use simple dances while students are entering and exiting the music room. Students simply do the actions as they walk, stopping now and then to do a fancy step or two. It gets them listening from the moment they enter the room.

Students who do not want to clap hands with a partner can do the clapping motions in the air. They are still participating but they are not being forced into an activity they find uncomfortable.

Use simple movement songs and adapted dances to fill the time when students are waiting (e.g. at a school assembly while waiting for all the students to arrive). Teachers and administrators will love the fact that the children are engaged and not getting into mischief. You will look like a magician in addition to being a musician!

Use dances and movement to create variety in a music class, providing a break from focused mental activities and from sitting for long periods of time. Use dances and movement to prepare or practice beat, phrase lengths, listening to instructions and responding to music. These are all music curriculum outcomes (just in case an administrator asks you to justify having so.much.fun.)

For “littles” use marches, fiddle tunes and other songs with simple musical forms and create your own dances with your students.

Older students appreciate moving to music that is more complex. Use movements that keep the beat without making any sound (tapping shoulders, winking, bending knees, etc.). Let the students be the leader, changing the actions for each new phrase – a great listening exercise!

Although I didn’t compose any of these four dances I had fun arranging them to use with my students. And I do have some dancing stories to share!

When I was a student, we didn’t have a music room in my small elementary school. The music teacher would travel to each classroom to teach music (sound familiar?) so we didn’t have much space for things like dance and movement activities. However, dance was part of our gym classes. Our teacher would bring out the record player that looked like a square box. The top was the speaker that would detach and be set up to amplify the scratchy 45 rpm record so we could dance. Those of you who are 50 years or younger may have to go online to read up on what a 45 record looks like! That scratchy little record allowed us to have great fun dancing to A-hunting We Will Go and Seven Jumps (among others). When I was teaching in my first school, among the resources I found in my room was an old 45 rpm dance record that included Seven Jumps!  Although I use a version of the music I created on my keyboard, the essence of that early recording has been preserved as closely as I could remember it. My students enjoy this dance as much as I did, and I STILL enjoy doing it with them, although I am not as limber as I was when I was eight years old!

Irish Polka and Clap, Clap Bow were songs that I discovered during my early years of teaching and they became a staple movement activity with my students. They work well as a greeting song as students enter the music room and any time we need a movement break. I also discovered that they could be pressed into service to keep students engaged (and out of trouble) when they were waiting for a school assembly to begin. I taught at a K-8 school with over 600 students. For an all-school assembly, the “littles” sat in the front which meant they arrived in the gym first. They would sit and wait for the rest of the students to arrive and be seated which sometimes took up to 15 minutes. This was long enough for them to become restless and get into mischief. I started doing simple music activities to keep them amused. We did follow the leader/keep the beat activities to lots of lively music. We also had some songs that I taught every class in the lower elementary grades so we could sing a few things while waiting. Then I discovered that Irish Polka and Clap, Clap Bow could be done while remaining seated. The students loved having something to do, the teachers were thrilled to be relieved of managing restless pupils and the principal was delighted with the wonderful behaviour of the students. Music for the win!

Sasha is a dance I discovered late in my career. I wish I had known about it earlier as this quickly became one of my students’ favourite dances (and mine also). The minor tonality and the lively music are a great way to perk up sluggish students, getting them moving and greeting others in the class. Although it is meant to be a partner dance, it also works to do the actions “in the air” if a partner has not been located in time, or if a student is needing personal space and doesn’t want to touch anyone else. I traced my hands and cut out the shapes using spongy craft material. Students without a partner could use my spare pair of hands on the nearby wall. (This is also a great adaptation for those who are averse to touching or being touched by others). Sasha was also a song that was used in the “waiting-for-the-assembly-to-start” rotation of songs.

Dance is such a great way to teach children to listen to instructions, move to the music, feel the beat and phrases, learn about respectful touching of others, and learn dances from other cultures. I didn’t know I was learning all those things when I was in elementary school. Dancing was just fun, and it still is!