Interactive music sessions with Miss Wanda are filled with singing, movement, puppet play, and a wide variety of stringed and rhythm instruments.

30-minute classes can be based around specific curriculum objectives as well as themes such as nature, holidays, seasons, letters of the alphabet, and early literacy.

Basic concepts like colors, counting, and shapes are reinforced while children’s imaginations are sparked learning new songs and developing listening and social skills.

Each session ends with the children participating in a “So Long” song where they have the opportunity for a hands-on experience playing one of Miss Wanda’s instruments.

Classroom visits can be arranged on a one-time basis, once a month, bi-monthly, or weekly. Students who have Miss Wanda as their music teacher for the school year get to play the autoharp, banjo, canjo, drums, dulcimers, guitar, xylophone, and more.

Wanda Degen started sharing the folk music and instruments she loves in Lansing-area classrooms when her own children were young. In 1989 she released her first recording of family music, Four Little Grasshoppers. As a Michigan Wolf Trap Teaching Artist for nearly 20 years (1989 - 2008), Wanda led one-week residencies all over the state where she trained teachers, developing activities with them, at incorporating the performing arts into the preschool curriculum. Part of a national program, the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning through the Arts is based in Vienna, Virginia. Wanda’s workshop, Songs for Parents and Teachers of Young Children, can be presented at teacher in-services and conferences.