TREE POLKA! 

BY EARTH MAMA 

I wrote this after working with middle school kids who could only name 4 types of trees! There are over 60 tree species listed in this song, including the whole second verse filled with pine trees. Can you smell the forest pines?

Earth Literacy, the art and science of knowing this planet we call Home, the knowing and naming by species and biome, by taste and smell, by season and climate add to the richness of our lives. Earth Literacy is also the key to a sustainable future on our Amazing Earth!

   Learn to dance the polka for great exercise and co-ordination.

Tree Polka by Joyce Johnson Rouse

Oak, elm and poplar

Alder, magnolia and ash

Redbud and linden

Persimmon, apple, sumac

Walnut and hickory

Sweet gum and sycamore, yew

Maple, cherry, pear and myrtle

Cottonwood and spruce

(A verse of pines)

Digger and Jeffrey

Torrey and bristle cone

Lodgepole and bishop

Limber, Apache, knobcone

Sugar, Chihuahua

Whitebark and Monterey

Austrian, Scotch and Coulter

Western, white, Foxtail

Ginkgo and hemlock

Locust and chestnut and birch

Buckeye and laurel

Olive and aspen and fir

Basswood and dogwood

Butternut, cedar and beech

Tulip, chinkopin, mimosa

Willow, palm and peach

©2002 Rouse House Music, ASCAP. All rights reserved. http://www.earthmama.org/home

This Tree Polka blog written by Joyce Rouse was first published in the Children's Music Network blog in December, 2014. Reposted here with their permission.

NAAEE Crowd Inspiring and Supportive Community

This week, I have had the pleasure to spend time with some of the most innovative and determined individuals, who are responsible for the future of our Earth. They are the educators who work tirelessly to provide knowledge and instill responsibility in our future generations. I'm attending the North American Association for Environmental Education 41st Annual Conference, Gaining Perspective: Seeing EE Through Different Lenses.

My presentations to this group have been focused on music in education. This is where Earth Mama began, working in my son's classrooms, with his peers and his teachers, advocating an understanding of our human impact on the Planet Earth. This week I've met many teachers who are continuing that work, creating programs and curriculum in diverse environments, covering a multitude of issues, facing the challenges of budget cuts, apathy and outright opposition to the realities of climate change.

For all those teachers who are working to connect with young minds and raise awareness in those communities, here are some tools that use today's media of choice, video.

YouTube Teachers is a collection of videos and tools created just for teachers by the developers at YouTube along with a global network of contributors. There are over 700,000 videos collected on a wide variety of topics, along with instructional videos on how to create a YouTube channel of your own.

And that brings me back to music, which has been my teaching tool of choice. I'm involved in the efforts of Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (M.U.S.E.) to create and continually expand a database of environmental music. This is a daunting project and we need volunteers for all aspects of this effort! Recently, Stan Slaughter covered our efforts in a Mother Earth News article, detailing how the collection of eco-audio is available 24/7 on EarthDayFM, an online radio station. Encouraging today's youth to learn through music, listening to the songs telling stories of history and science, sharing life experience in a memorable context, this is how I use music as an education tool.

As I return home to the mountains of Virginia after this week in California, it is my intention to share what I've experienced here with this energized group of educators. Thank you, for your ideas, your determination, your creativity and your enthusiasm to honor our Planet Earth.

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Joyce Rouse AKA Earth Mama creates blog posts on timely topics in collaboration with her communications manager, Bonnie Cranmer. Please refer any questions or requests for permission to use any material contained on this blog to earthmamaoffice@gmail.com.