6yo Covers “The NEW Periodic Table Song (In Order)” at Talent Show

On 2013-10-25, cute 6-year-old girl, Julia Barker, covered AsapSCIENCE's “The NEW Periodic Table Song (In Order)”, singing at her elementary school talent show. What follows is the story of how she got there.

2013-08-15

Julia's parents hear the “Fifty Nifty United States” song, introducing them to the power of fact-laden song.

2013-08-31

Julia is proud to recite the “Fifty Nifty United States” song.

2013-09-01

Julia's parents wonder what other facts might be learned through song. Maybe the elements of the periodic table?

First, they find Tom Lehrer's classic 1959 “The Elements” song (Google video search, Wikipedia).

Then they find AsapSCIENCE's “The NEW Periodic Table Song (In Order)". It's great because the elements are in periodic table order (something else learned) and the graphics are fun. But it's so fast!

2013-09-02

Dad produces a slowed-down and captioned version of the periodic table song to ease learning.

2013-09-16

Julia plays with the school computer and edits together a video of songs she knows. To her parent's surprise, she's learned most of the periodic table song.

Maybe Julia could recite it for the upcoming school talent show? Conveniently, AsapSCIENCE made available an intrumental version of their periodic table song, but even at various speeds, Julia can't sing on beat with the music, so a cappella it is. Julia practices to memorize the rest of the song.

Dad thinks displaying the song's video would be nice addition to Julia's performance, but because she won't be singing to the music, he takes stills from the video of each of the elements, so he can manually display each element from the video in sync with Julia's performance. At Mom's suggestion, Dad censors silicon's graphic.

2013-09-25

Julia tries out for the school talent show by reciting the periodic table song a capella. The judges think it's great, but would like her to do it with music.

Dad produces versions of the instrumental music at various speeds and decides 80% is about right for Julia. He also takes the original periodic table song video, slows it down, and inserts the censored silicon, to accompany Julia on stage. (Download for your own performance!)

Julia practices to hear the rhythm of the music and sing in time. She attends weekly talent show practices.

2013-10-25

The day of the talent show, Mom is a little nervous for Julia as her at home practices are still a little rough. Dad mentions how she does better on when practicing on stage.

Showtime! Julia is the second act. She does great! Standing ovation! Much accolades after the show. “Put it on YouTube!” “Tell Ellen DeGeneres!” Kids want to learn it! On the walk home, a car backs up just to say, "We loved it, Julia!"

2014-10-23

Dad puts Julia's periodic table performance on YouTube. Any money earned goes to Julia's college fund, so pass it around!