"You'll Always Know Your Cow"

One of our stops on this trip has been to see the Erie Canal, and take a little boat ride on it.

Liz made up this amazing booklet for each of the kids on this trip. She got clip art from various places, pictures of things we were going to visit, and little blurbs that she put together so that the kids could read a bit about what we were going to do before we got there. She made sure that the stuff she wrote was age appropriate, as well as short enough to be interesting. Liz also left some blank pages for the kids to draw or paste souvenirs in. I was pretty impressed.

Liz also read a lot of stories with the kids before we left that dealt with where we were going. As well as rounded out her "priming" of them with a few multi-media presentations (songs and videos).

One of her songs that she was playing for them before we left was "The Erie Canal". Rather than just reciting to them when it was built, how long it was, who was Governor when it was built, etc., she really did a pretty good job of making this stuff interesting. We talked about locks, how they worked, the importance to river traffic to trade in the 1800's, etc.

When we got close to the canal, we were singing the song, and we realized that Buddy Boy had gotten one of the words wrong. We've all done this at one time or another (some of us more often than not), so it was no big thing. But he insisted for the longest time that his version was right, and he didn't want to change it.

The original chorus goes:

Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor,
you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

Well, Buddy Boy insisted the third line was:

And you'll always know your neighbor,
you'll always know your pal cow

Given that he still talks about wanting to be a farmer, I guess it's good to "always know your cow".

The song can be heard here.