Philip Newton's journal

Stella says "Alle Leut'" (which is apparently sung in all sorts of play groups at the end) and the birthday song by Rolf Zuckowski whose refrain starts "Wie schön, dass du geboren bist". And maybe "Ich geh' mit meiner Laterne".

The first I thought of was "Alle meine Entchen".

But there are really a wealth of German children's songs -- we have a book which has quite a few, and I know most of them (though I wouldn't necessarily know the words to even the first verse for all of them), so I'm not sure what representative popular ones would be.

Which reminds me, I really like the book we have, and I'd really like to have a similar one in English, with popular children's songs. Because I don't really know any by heart, even "Twinkle, twinkle, little star", for example.

Do you have any recommendations for good books with children's songs (and songs sung to children even if they're not specifically for them, e.g. perhaps Christmas songs etc.)? Preferably with words and music.

Oh, and in case you would like our German book: it's "Das große Buch der Kinderlieder", by Michael Holtmann, with illustrations by Albert Kokai; our copy has ISBN 3-932137-59-0.

We saw it at a friend's place, and I liked it because it's fairly comprehensive: a wide range of songs, and also nicely done (with illustrations, one song per double page, not just the first verse, music with chords).

Though as Stella points out, while those songs are traditional children's songs, not every child will know all of them. Which is a bit of a pity, because they _are_ traditional, and if children learn only ten songs, eight of which are modern, then I think there's some folklore going lost. Sort of as if children had never heard of certain "standard" fairy tales such as Snow White or Cinderella.

So, perhaps we should sing some more with Amy :) Stella said she doubts Amy knows "Alle meine Entchen"; if that's true, that'll have to be remedied, given that it's the first song that comes to my mind when I think of "common German children's songs".

And also teach her some English nursery rhymes -- again, I think those are part of culture and something people should be familiar with. Though we do have a couple of books for those. It's mostly English songs I'm missing.