Childrens Song Favorites Lyrics and Chords for All Instruments

Children’s Song Favorites is a collection of 75 songs for children of all ages, most of them from the folk tradition. They have been collected over more than fifty years by a professional folk singer, who is also a mother and grandmother. Each song has the melody line, complete lyrics and suggested accompaniment chords for guitar or other instrument. Many of them are unusual— for example, all 13 verses of “The Three Blind Mice,” “Hail to Britannia” (a British nursery rhyme song), and for older children, “Chopo, My Pony” (a cowboy song), “Old Thompson’s Mule” (of minstrel origin) and “The Housewife’s Lament.” Audience requests have persuaded the author to include two pieces she has written—”The Doll Song” and “The Solution to Pollution.” More than three-quarters of the songs involve audience participation, making this an ideal repertory resource for teachers and youth leaders. A few descriptive sentences, sometimes with suggestions for creative activity, precede each song.

About the Author
Alex Usher has collected and performed folk songs for over fifty years. She has amassed a treasure trove of songs that work well with children, and used them through the years to amuse her own four children (who later joined her and her husband on the stage) as well as to entertain youngsters at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital where she was the volunteer “Music Lady” in the late 1970s. In the early days of TV she was a regular performer on several children’s series on PBS Channel 9 in St. Louis. (in one she was a jack-in-the-box who popped out and did a song and a dance in each episode!) She still shares her music with her grandchildren and their classmates.
More recently she has specialized in playing the autoharp as a solo instrument. Mel Bay’s Basic Melodic Autoharp Solos is her contribution to helping folks teach themselves this art. She is a National Autoharp Champion, a four-time winner in the International Competition at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield KS, and has made several solo autoharp CDs in the last several years. Currently she does a program of folk songs called “Hand-me-down Music” for the Missouri Humanities Council, and gives many other performances, primarily in the St. Louis area.

The songs are arranged alphabetically, and an extra table of contents lists the songs by categories: animals, cowboys and the West, creative activity, dance tunes, history, holidays, quiet time, and teaching. Although this book was designed primarily for children, the author regularly uses many of these songs with grown-up audiences.

Aikin Drum —
Alphabet Song, The —
Away, Idaho —
Babes in the Woods, The —
Barnyard Song —
Betty Brady —
Bib-A-Lolly-Boo —
Big-Eye Br’er Rabbit —
Billy Grimes —
Carrion Crow, The —
Chopo, My Pony —
Circus Song, The —
Cluck Old Hen —
Cock Robin —
Coulter’s Candy —
Crocodile Song, The —
Darby Ram, The —
Deaf Woman’s Courtship, The —
Doll Song, The —
Down by the Bay —
Father Grumble —
Five Times Five —
Fly, The —
Fod! —
Frog He Would A-Wooing Go —
Frog and the Crow, The —
Grandma’s Advice —
Greenland Whale Fishery, The —
Ground Hog —
Hail to Britannia —
Hi! Ho! The Rattlin’ Bog —
Hole in the Bucket —
Honduran Lullaby —
Housewife’s Lament, The —
Hush, Little Baby —
In Good Old Colony Times —
Jennie Jenkins —
Jesus, Tender Shepherd —
Johnny Sands —
Kicking Mule, The —
Limerick Song —
Little Pigs —
Mister Fox —
Nick Nack Paddy Whack —
Nickety Nackety —
Oats and Beans —
Oh, Mother, How Pretty the Moon Is Tonight —
Old Dan Tucker —
Old Dumpty Moore —
Old Joe Clark —
Old Man Came Over the Lea, The —
Old Thompson’s Mule —
Old Woman All Skin and Bones —
Old Yellow Slicker I Wore on the Range, The —
On Ilkla Moor Baht Hat —
Opossum, The —
Perrie Merrie Dixi Domini —
Polly Wolly Doodle —
Revolutionary Tea —
Robin-A-Thrush —
Snow Bird, The —
Soldier, Soldier —
Solution to Pollution, The —
Swapping Song, The —
Three Blind Mice —
Three Craws —
Three Flies —
Three Funny Maidens —
Three Jovial Huntsmen —
Washing Day, The —
What Are Little Boys Made Of? —
When I Was a Little Boy —
Whizz Fish, The —
Willie’s Lullaby —