The Windermere Ukulele Orchestra is comprised of 28 3rd graders who give up their recesses to learn ukulele and genres of music that don’t get much airplay these days (early country, blues, ragtime and tin pan alley pieces).
Service learning is also an important part of our 3rd grade learning. As the world gets smaller, people seem to have grown more distant. We encourage students and teachers alike to jump in and lend a hand when others might pass on by.
We’ve combined two of our passions: music and helping in making this little song book. Our class selected 27 traditional tunes and made accompanying prints to illustrate them. After careful research and consideration we chose the Capital Area Humane Society (CAHS) to support through our sales. You can learn more about the CAHS at their website: http://www.cahs-pets.org/
If you don’t know a tune’s melody, look it up on the internet or better yet, have a musician show you. You can even make up your own melody, making it your own, as musicians have done with many of these same tunes over the many years they’ve been enjoyed.
Sometimes considered children’s songs, the majority of the tunes in this book were the rock-n-roll of their day. So dust off that banjo, guitar, mandolin, or ukulele and start playing.
We hope you will be inspired by our efforts to make music and serve others.
