See How Much We've Learned (One Hundred Days)

Celebrating 100 Days Of School is a fairly recent thing in education. At least, they didn't celebrate it when we were kids. But it's popular with younger grades these days. If you are familiar with Teresa's "Sounds" series of tunes ("Summer Sounds," "Whacky Sounds," etc.), or John's tune called "Leap Year," this song is in that same vein. Create a simple pattern, sing it over and over while adding new parts as you go, then reverse the process, subtracting parts until the end. It's a great way to teach and reinforce part singing.

This song has four vocal parts, but the song might as well be four measures long, because each line repeats. In fact, to make it easier, our studio singers did the math and figured out how many times to sing each line. For instance, the one-bar phrase of part 1 ("One hundred days of school!") is sung 20 times before the break at bar 9. Part 2 is a two-bar phrase that is sung eight times before the break at bar 9, and so forth. Or they can just read the music and count the repeats, but in a live performance, you might prefer not to have music. Of course, it will help to have a conductor for this to cue entrances and exits. If you use our tracks, you will hear that we cranked the drum fills in the mix heading into bars 9 and 13 so folks will know where they are. Also, the choir and top piano line get louder at bar 17 to let you know you're near the end.

Don't let the four parts scare you! This should be singable by younger grades as these lines are easy and repetitive. The only part that changes is part 2 (bar 5 is different from bar 7, bar 13 is different from bar 15), and even then the rhythm stays the same. If your kids can pull this off, it's an impressive sounding piece, especially for young singers. Have fun with this!