Archives for March 2012

Hi everyone!

I wanted to give you a sneaky peek behind the scenes of the new Birthday Song shoot we filmed in Manchester a few weeks ago!

Obviously we can’t have a party without recording an awesome tune to dance to so here’s a photo of me doing my best to hit the high notes in the sound session (well… if I’m honest, Katy did the high notes, thanks Katy!)

The old Birthday Song is officially very, very old and though we love to sing-along, we wanted to have a song that really got our bottoms wiggling, our arms waving and made everyone feel like we were at a great big CBeebies Birthday party together!

In fact, that’s exactly how the shoot felt! We had 18 children at that party, ages 1 to 7!

Everyone came along in their very best party gear, check out these sunglasses…

The room was decorated with CBeebies Bug balloons, CBeebies’ characters, streamers and beautifully decorated boxes which the children were sorely tempted to rip open!

…So was I if I’m honest! Katy and I had the fun job of surprising everyone by jumping out of a HUGE giftbox!

I hope you have lots of fun singing and dancing to the new Birthday Song, we had a ball making it… and now that I can’t stop singing it - every day’s a birthday day!

Ladies and Gentleman, Bugs and Girls, I’m Adam, producer for The Lingo Show TV series, which I’m delighted to say is coming to your screens weekdays at 9:35 and 13:35, from next Monday 12th March!

A very hard working and talented production team here at CBeebies in Salford have been busier than a plate-spinning spider to bring you 15 jam-packed episodes, featuring Lingo and his bug buddies going on adventures and learning new words.

Filming began last September with over 50 local children around Manchester and Liverpool and involved us pointing our cameras at lots of fresh air, pretending that the bugs were really stood there! We had great fun making all sorts of props ping about and fall over, knowing that the Lingo bugs would be animated over the top to bring it all to life. 

Learning foreign languages is of course at the heart of The Lingo Show, so we’ve worked hard with our colleagues in BBC Learning to get it just right. The introduction of new foreign words is carefully balanced and blended with plenty of cartoon fun and lots of catchy, catchy songs for our viewers to sing along to. I hope your children enjoy joining in and saying these new and exciting words along with the bugs.

The whole Lingo process, from scripts to songs, has had input from educational and language specialists too. For this first series we introduce the three priority languages for the Primary curriculum: Mandarin, French and Spanish.

Lingo Art Director Jade battles the elements on Liverpool’s Albert Docks – the glamour of TV!

The first week of the TV episodes features Chinese bug Wei introducing familiar objects in Mandarin. Week two sees French bug Jargonaise organizing her Big Bug Shows, then finally Spanish bug Queso brings his flamenco flair to the final five Spanish episodes.

Keep an eye out for the all-new Bug-mobile too, which has been especially built for the TV series, adapted from the website design and magically transforming into a real-life home and Big Bug Stage for the bugs!

It’s really exciting knowing that lots of you already love Lingo and his troupe of international bugs from our website and so can’t wait to see the TV show. It’s been a dream job for me to take the characters that our Web Producer Nicole created and let them run riot in the real world. 

(If you've never checked out the fantastic Lingo Show website, you're missing a treat: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/lingo-show ) 

I do hope you and your children have as much fun watching the show as we’ve had putting it all together. 

Best buggy wishes

Adam

Here at CBeebies we’re always looking for new ways to inspire your little ones’ creativity!

Our ideas team are doing some research into music and are interested in how children respond to different types of music.

We have found that children have an instinctive response to music that perhaps grown ups don’t. For example, we will always do high kicks when we hear the can-can – but if your little one doesn’t know this dance how do they move to it?

We would love to know what your children see with these pieces of music!

Do they think of animals? Places? Stories? Weather? How does it make them feel? How does it make them move?

Click on the links below to play the tune – (we find not letting them to look at the visuals works best).

The parents around the office have tried this and have had some great responses! Everything from flying lions, to crawling caterpillars via haunted houses and navy hedgehogs!

Enjoy! And let us know how it goes!

Piece 1

Piece 2

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