Skip-a to My Lou

We've been singing Skip-a to My Lou (well, I say Skip to my Lou, but my Folk song book says Skip-a, so I guess I've been saying it wrong =)  for the past few weeks, but changing the words to fit our Skip Count song.  This week, I had it in the lesson plans for our folk song of the week, so I got out my American Folksongs For Children book to see if there was a second verse we could sing....boy was there are second verse, and a third, and a fourth, and a TWENTY-SECOND!  Wow, I did not know how versatile this song is.  The book says that there are upwards of 150 stanzas recorded for this song, and really you could make up many of your own too (which is the beauty of most folk songs, making it really fun for children to get creative while you sing!)

Just for your amusement I'll share the 22 stanzas recorded in the book I have:

Wagons

• Little red wagon, painted blue
• Pull her up and down in the little red wagon
• Teeter up and down in the little red wagon

Animals

• Pig in the parlor, what'll I do?
• Cat in the buttermilk, lapping up cream
• Rats in the bread tray, how they chew
• Chickens in the garden, shoo shoo shoo
• Rabbit in the cornfield, big as a mule
• Cow in the kitchen moo cow moo
• Hogs in the potato patch, rooting up corn

Going to Market

• Going to market two by two
• Dad's old hat and Mama's old shoe      (Trevor's favorite!)
• Back from market, what did you do?
• Had a glass of buttermilk, one and two

Skipping and Catching

• Skip a little faster, that won't do
• Going to Texas, come along too
• Lost my partner, what'll I do?
• I'll get another one prettier than you             (Too funny!)
• Catch that red bird, skip-a to my lou
• If you can't get a red bird, take a blue
• If you can't get a blue bird, black bird'll do

We sang a bunch of these while we were eating breakfast the other day and Trevor thought that most of them were just hilarious!  Try some of them out with your kids!  Do you have any other stanzas for this song that you sing with your family?

Happy Singing!

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