America, My Home

by Teresa Jennings

There is no such thing as "too much patriotism." Or at least, that's the way we feel about it. So every once in a while, we come up with another flag-waving, heart-pounding classic for you to use with your young Americans.

This time, our anthem is a very simple one. We wrote it with "every person, young and old" in mind. It is mostly unison, with just a couple of obvious and easy divisi parts. The lyrics are also pretty comfortable and definitely personal to every good citizen.

The written piano part is an excellent accompaniment by itself, but we would like to at least suggest you give the P/A cassette arrangement a listen. It is full of brass, woodwinds, timpani, chimes, and other neat things, and really makes the tune as majestic as we think it ought to be. In fact, we're so fond of the wind and percussion accompaniment, we've decided to release this song as an easy concert band arrangement. (See page 57 for more details.)

This is also another excellent opportunity to show off your students' sign language skills. You will find the signs to the lyrics on page 26. You can use all of them, or select a few key words for emphasis.

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.