Time for the wrap-up!
For me, this season was simply amazing. You guys brought some great songs, and LOTS of them! It was a very healing experience for me. I was very frazzled and stressed out by end of the school year stuff, moving to a new house and the heavy workload for the committee I'm on, so spending a week focusing on ukulele playing, and listening to all of your fun songs was enjoyable, relaxing and a very welcome change.
I had one prize set aside for my favorite song this week. It is a signed copy of Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander's new book
Animal Ark.
This was a super hard decision for me. There were so many excellent songs. A few that stood out were: A Bird's Eye View of my Uke's "Yellow" (such a great, original song) AlanDP's cover of "I Love Ukuleles", TheSillyDave's, "Epp Oop Ork Ah Ah" and TCK's "I Wanna Be Like You." I could have given it to Jazzbanjorex for any of the thirty-one songs he brought to the season (31!) or Lelouden for any of the twenty she recorded.
In the end, I decided on a Junior Seasonista. Linda said she was her "shadow" at one point, but really, she was a ray of sunshine for this season. She made me smile in every video she showed up in, and especially when she performed with Linda.
So congrats, Paisley you are the winner of Season 277! Linda, if you give me an address, I will get the book in the mail for her. I hope she loves it!
Now for the real reason of the season: the books! There were 146 songs in the playlist. I promised that we would be donating a brand new book per song to a local elementary school in need of some books. The school library we chose is T.S. Morris Elementary School in Montgomery, AL. We have a friend who is a teacher there, and she told us they could REALLY use them. They have already been donated, and we hope they will make some children very happy this next school year.
There have been some jokes about how expensive this will be for us, but I will be honest, I am on teacher salary with four kids, and there is no way we would be able to purchase all of these books ourselves. Through some of my professional connections, we were able to get all of the books donated by the various publishers, so thanks to them, and thanks to you all. You brought some great songs. Every single one of them was fun and enjoyable for me, and I learned several that I will be attempting for story time. (This week I'm trying Rex's version of "Five Little Monkeys") I am so glad to be back into the Seasons community after a few weeks away. Now to start thinking about tree songs........
I will leave you with a video of our whole family squished on the couch.