Land of the Silver Birch

This Term's Folksong:

Land of the Silver Birch

This is a different version than we learned from the Homestead Picker Folksong CDs. But the guy's voice is beautiful, and the quality sound of the guitar is rich and deep. We noted the differences in lyrics and then because there are word prompts and chord prompts for the guitar, we were able to follow along quite nicely.  He has an online guitar tutorial here (careful of unlovely image/ads on the same page). There's a page of printable lyrics HERE.

Michael Mitchell - Land of the Silver Birch Sing-a-long!  This is my kids first pick because it has fun sound effects and word prompts.  I liked that it was kid-safe with no inappropriate images.  The first verses were new to us, but that's the way with folksongs as oral tradition... everyone passes them on a little differently. 

See a mom-with-a-beautiful-accent's hand motions, watch her video here. I'm thinking that even though my kids laughed at the moose motions, the hands-on aspect would probably help my littlest littles learn it more quickly.

Free download - downloadable mp3 of a children's choir version at the bottom of the wiki page. I personally can't stand the choir version, but it is interesting to contrast the difference of music style.

Here is the emusic download link where you can listen to a sample first for free. You can also get a certain amount of free downloads but I don't know the details of that. (I used to have a membership, but got annoyed at the constant e-mails they sent and having search and figure out which music to download, but that was years ago, maybe it's better now).