Frog Biscuits

Songs for Children in English Will Entertain And Teach. The New Playground English Project Is Coming to The Market.

  These songs for children, not only for preschoolers, will help children start to love English. Frog Biscuits is the first official album of the Playground English group, and contains 27 songs for children, in English, from very simple rhymes to more complex stories. The album is great not only for teaching the English language but also as a music album to listen to. The production of the recording, Frog Biscuits, was done by Ondřej Galuška (Eggnoise, The Odd Gifts).

When Karolina Shipstead started teaching children at the Playground English Kindergarten in English, she wasn’t satisfied only with the art activities. She started to write her own songs for children in English. She applied her feel for melody when making the songs, and her lyrics, suitable for children, gave birth to an amazing collection of songs. The lyrics introduce basic vocabulary and sentence structure and, thanks to the catchy, melodic songs, this information is easier to remember. It was necessary to record these songs for teaching purposes. From the very beginning, the parents of the children who attended the kindergarten got involved. And so Karolina met David Pavelka, Ivan Tatar and Ondřej Galuška.

  When she approached Ondřej Galuška, he found that these songs were worth doing arrangements for and to record properly.. According to Ondřej, Karolina has an enormous talent for melodies that are both easily memorable and melodic and, at the same time, tasteful and enjoyable, even on repeated listening.  “Especially in English songs for children, it is difficult to find something that would not be tasteless or badly recorded. Where else should we care more about the cultivation of good taste and the sense of beauty than with children?” Ondřej Galuška asks.

  Karolina Shipstead is an artist and founder of the English kindergarten and the art school, Playground English. She lives in Lešany near Kralupy nad Vltavou with her family, which also participated on the album. The Playground English CD was produced by Ondřej Galuška, musician (Eggnoise, The Odd Gifts) and philosopher (published a book, Tělo hudby...i.e. The Body of Music). Besides him, there are other participants on the album such as Ivan Tatar, David Pavelka (SOČR) and many other musicians and children. The album contains 27 songs, some of which have simpler lyrics and can serve as a nice aid when teaching English; others attract using light irony and more complicated stories. “I would like the songs to be used both when teaching little children English and also school children, as we do it. Besides, I would really be pleased if someone listens to the album just as it is, simply as a normal music album, “ says Karolina Shipstead.

The album Frog Biscuits was recorded over several years in the studios of Fonografik, Faust, 3bees, and was mixed by Mishan Pajdiak in Little m Records.