If anyone could make kids smile at the prospect of taking hours of standardized tests, it was Randy Beard.
"Don't forget to get plenty of rest," sang Beard as he strummed along on his guitar. "Do your best on the North Dakota test!"
The roomful of fourth- and fifth-graders at Little Flower Catholic School giggled.
Beard, a former sixth-grade teacher, is now a popular singer-songwriter and educational consultant from Newburgh, Ind. He's been presenting in Minot schools for going on 16 years and has branched out to perform in other venues, such as last fall's Norsk Hstfest and the American Heart Association benefit "Go Red Heart Gala," which will be held Feb. 14 at the Holiday Inn-Riverside in Minot.
Beard was in town on other business and his friend Kevin Overland offered to help pay some of his expenses so he could work with children at Little Flower.
Beard uses music to help develop reading and writing skills. When he was a teacher, Beard said he started out having his students write things, which he then set to music.
On Friday, Beard performed some of his own songs and took some of the words the children had written to create brand new tunes.
Since Little Flower Catholic Church pastor Rev. Fred Harvey had left for vacation with two fellow priests, every grade in the school had written prayers for "Father Fred's" vacation, which was written on a prayer wheel that hung in the school hallway. Beard took the prayers and made it a song, prompting more smiles when he got to the fifth grade's wishes that God might protect Harvey from such vacation-spoilers as sunburn, illness, and hotel bedbugs.
During another song, he taught the children a new word: "onomatopoeia," or the word describing the sounds animals and people make. He invited children from the audience to come up and make some accompanying sound effects.
"ROAR!" suggested one boy with gusto, while others suggested "MEOW!" or "SQUEAK!" or "ARF!"
Kids clapped in time or pounded the floor to add rhythm to the music.
Other songs taught the importance of prewriting and editing when kids are writing something new and making sure that a sentence has a beginning, middle and end.
Beard plans to return to the school sometime in February, he said.
