As part of the music box, we decided to highlight the pupils’ mother tongues. Whether or not they are native speakers, many of them speak at least a second language at home and we felt it was important to share them with the class. We asked the parents of the pupils to teach us nursery rhymes in their mother tongue.
A mother came to teach us a rhyme in Wolof. She stated by reading the translation of the text so that the children knew what the song was about and then she sang it to them with the music. She followed by teaching them the words. The melody is very simple because it is repetitive but the lyrics were not as simple since some words are difficult to pronounce. It was a pleasant moment of sharing.
We also decided to learn the Frère Jacques rhyme in several languages so that we could sing it in a trilingual chorus or more! We involved our two language assistants. Yasmin learned the English version and John the Spanish version. We first sang the 3 versions in succession and then as a chorus.
