For anyone who lives around the Midwest, particularly in Michigan, there is a very talented singer/songwriter named Dan Hall. He has a website - danhall.com. His program works like this: you contract him for a 5 day period. In that period, he spends about an hour with each class writing a song for each grade. The songs are written about some topic the students have learned about. (Our school chose science; another local school chose economics) Each class of each grade does one verse. He plays the guitar and brainstorms, guides, and teaches the kids how to write the song. Later, he adds other instruments to the recording to make it sound really good. On the 4th day, he sets up his recording equipment at the school and records each class's song onto the tracks of the music he has already recorded. Later, he makes this into CD's that the kids can purchase. An evening performance is scheduled for the whole school so the kids can sing their songs. He plays the recording at the same time, so it sounds good even if the kids mess up in the "live" performance! It is truly magical what he does in a week. The kids love him, and so do the teachers. This special event works because of his talents and personality. We just did ours last night and it was a huge success. We had more than 1,200 people there for a elementary school with about 430 students. We had some controversy at first because it is hard to visual and explain how good this is until you experience it. His price is not unreasonable, and can be offset by grants, profit on CD sales, and sponsors. If anyone is interested in this, they can contact me directly. It takes a fair amount of organization and coordination with the school, especially since you usually have to use a local high school or some other place to fit all the people. But it is really worth it. The kids just walk around school singing their songs. The 4th and 5th graders think they are too cool when they first hear about it, but Dan wins them all over.