Mama, You're My Favorite Gal

It may be old-fashioned to call Mama our favorite gal, but we think Mama will be just fine with the sentiment. This bright and bouncy Vaudeville style tune is a great novelty song for celebrating Mother's Day, which falls in May every year. You could, of course, also use it for Father's Day in June by substituting "Papa" for "Mama," and "guy" for "gal."

The song is very easy to learn and lots of fun to sing. To make it even more fun, you could let kids get more into the 1920s theme by using megaphones to sing through. These could be made of paper rolled into cones and taped. You could even let them color and decorate the cones for the performance. If cones don't work for you, singers could just cup their hands around their mouths to create that "tinny" sound made popular almost a century ago.

Costumes from the era might be over the top for just one song, but if you're doing a thematic program, they would sure be cute. There are tons of resources online for 1920s fashion, which is distinctive. If you have time, it might be neat to make this a cross curricular discussion, including music, too. The recorded tracks for this song are deliberately representative of what might have been used back then, in case that helps.