Help! Do you know any songs that can be accompanied by one guitar chord?

[petalpower]

Title says it all really. I am teaching a group of 8-9 year olds to play the guitar and we have just progressed onto chords. However the only song I know that can be accompanied by one chord only is 'Ten in the Bed' and that's going to get a bit boring. They are definitely not up to changing chords yet! Can anyone help? Long shot I know but I wondered whether Mumsnet knowledge could succeed where I and Google have failed!

When I was at school we learned a song that went "little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tscky..." don't know if it was one or two chords. If I can convince DH to go in the loft tomorrow I'll try and find my music bag (yes, I do still have some of the music, over 20 years on)

Thank you. Bumping for any musical daytime Mumsnetters!

Tricky. I've had a look in my ancient guitar books (haven't been opened for 25 years!). Only thing I could come up with is the Boll Weevil Song which has the same chord all the way through except for a dominant 7 chord for 2 bars - think you could adapt this by changing one note in the melody line and keeping the tonic chord throughout. (In the book that I've dug out, it's in G, so there's a D7 chord with an F# in the melody - could reasonably change F# to G and keep the G chord)

Alternatively (and this might just be a recipe for chaos - I've never taught groups of kids or guitar), what if you split the class into two and gave one group a tonic chord and one a dominant, and got them to alternate at the right time?

I have sent a message to DP who is a musician to ask him. He's also taught kids before so he might have some ideas! Am telling you this so this thread appears on my threads on I'm list!

I do think you'd be surprised what they could do though - what about teaching them to move between just two chords? Slowly?

Any Status Quo song?

do songs with E and E flat, there's only on finger to move isn't there (iirc!)

That's E major and E minor I think, SEA.
Maybe you could write something for them petalpower.

Wow! What a response. I go to Tesco and come back to all these messages. Thank you to everyone who's replied. LOL at Status Quo songs Soup Dragon! I bet they'd love it though. Maybe I should set my expectations a little higher or split the class and alternate between chords as IorekByrnison suggests. They are a class of 30 so it could be a recipe for chaos! Hope your DP has some ideas BlingLovin.

Some kids songs:
Row Row Row your boat,
It's raining, it's pouring
Ring around the rosie

Electric Avenue, Eddie Grant.

at the bottom of this page

Waterfront by Simple Minds. Probably not quite what you're after and a bit boring though!

'da da da da' !!! isn't that a one chord song. lyrics may be a bit tricky tho!

Jingle bells? sorta easy?

simple minds, i love that song.

London's Burning

Or you could tune the guitars to an open E Major chord, then get them to do a barre across all the strings?

We used to do 'Move It' like that when I was a kid. E. A. B.

Little Boxes

It's 3 chords though - or at least the 2 easy versions have 3, there's one with 2 but it's "hard"

London's Burning works, but it does sound a bit dull. Frere Jacques too. I suppose most tunes that are in a round will be harmonically limited.

I knew Mumsnet wouldn't let me down! Any more ideas? I can't believe that I didn't think of round type songs. Must try to get my brain in gear!