Chinese New Year, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, birthdays - all kinds of celebrations! Now you can sing about these holidays in Chinese. On their third album, Groovi Pauli and friends sing about Western and Chinese celebrations throughout the year. In a departure from previous albums, "Mandarin Chinese Songs for Kids" (2009) and "More Chinese Songs for Kids" (2010), this album uses an echo or "call and response" format to most songs. Groovi Pauli (a.k.a. Pauli Haakenson) explains, "In my work with teaching Chinese as a second language, I have found that the echo songs get kids immediately immersed in the song and the new vocabulary. They can easily sing along right away." Also new to this album is a "chat about the lyrics" section after each song, where the lyrics are broken down for meaning (in English and Chinese). This reinforces the meaning for the listener because we know we can sing along to a song in another language but have no idea what we are singing. In addition to Groovi Pauli's voice on the songs, you will hear his daughter Aoife (pronounced “eefa” aged 11), son Björn (aged 7), and nephew Hans (aged 10) who helps on the "chat about the lyrics" tracks. The song titles on this album, "Celebrations in Chinese 4 Kids," are: Chinese New Year Dragon Boat Festival Happy Birthday Christmas Fa La La Santa Claus is Coming to Town Halloween is here Scary Halloween Thanksgiving Mid-Autumn Festival Tomb Sweeping Festival Mother's Day Happy Father's Day For these songs about celebrations, Groovi Pauli has drawn from his experience teaching Mandarin Chinese to kids aged 4-8. "These holidays all come up as we go through a school year and I lament that there are not songs or rhymes that are immediately accessible for my students. This album will be incredibly useful to use for teaching vocabulary for each holiday." 
All lyrics and songs are composed by Groovi Pauli, who records at home on Pro Tools 10. Drum loops are used as the main groove to most of the tracks, on top of which he layers keyboard sounds, live banjo, trumpet and harmonica -- in addition to Aoife's trombone! The section "chat about the lyrics" was recorded using GarageBand. Musical genres include traditional Chinese, salsa, rock, world, and country. "Groovi Pauli and friends" have two books/DVDs published by Peking University Press, titled "Move and Groove in Mandarin Chinese with Groovi Pauli and Friends." The series includes music videos for many of the songs from their two previous albums.