Homeschooling Notes: Lyrical Science

Educational songs on life, plants, animals, and planets

Topic tags: Homeschooling

We take our kids to the local homeschool hub for classes in a group setting and a chance to socialize with other homeschool families. And to help anchor a circle of age-mates, I teach classes there on various topics.

The latest adventure came when our operations manager handed me the book Lyrical Life Science, by Doug and Dory Eldon. Would I be interested in doing that for my next class? I foolishly agreed.

The book has lyrics and chords for songs about bacteria, viruses, plants, vertebrates, and related topics. They’re all to the tune of common folk and patriotic songs—like “Oh, Bacteria” to the tune of “Oh, Susana.” I thought the concept was cute but most of the songs were too long and detailed for my age range. So, I decided to write my own by “Weird Al-ing” songs I already knew to make them about science topics.

My philosophy was to try to keep it simple and aim to have them remember two or three ideas from each class. Here’s the summary of my “Lyrical Science” course, followed by lyrics and chords: