E-I-E-I Oops! - Teacher's Edition

A Musical Play for Young Voices

By John Higgins

For my Kindergarten students, I found this play to be a lot of fun to learn! The music is great, lively and fun. The script is easy to learn and I am able to perform it in about 10 days! My students create their own scenery and help with the...

costumes. I've done it three times and it is always well recieved by parents and other classes! I highly recommend it! I have both boys and girls playing all the parts. The pigs do a fun vaudville song including jokes! There's also a great hoe down song where all the animals dance! The cute chick song is simply "cute" and one that everyone loves. It's meant to be funny and not taken too seriously!

I did not expect something so feudal in 2007. This is best exemplified by examining the lyrics to "Cute Chicks" by John Jacobson and John Higgins. At the play I endured, the "chicks" were 7 year-old girls. Throughout, the girls are told by the sheet music to strut, shake...

, bounce and pose. While bouncing and posing, they sing that they are cute 5 times, adorable, fine art, likeable, loveable, and the "pride of the neighborhood" implictly because they are cute. Then, they repeat this 2-3 more times. The writers' did include a line exclaiming that the chicks are smart, but as an afterthought. Smart is written one time for every ten a looks based comment is written. And, of course, the "pigs" were played by boys.  The kids repeat these lyrics every practice, reinforcing the same harmful message, in the approving presence of teachers and parents, that it is more important to be cute than smart. Now bounce for me. Gross.