There are some things that a young kid just needs to know as they venture out into the world — be that a trip to the zoo or a day at preschool. Their address and a parent’s phone number are high on that list. I made a phone number bracelet for her — number beads and a few sparkly stars with a magnetic clasp – for her first trip to the zoo, and I’ve been adding sparkly stars to make it larger as she grew. She more or less accidentally memorized our phone numbers from reading the bracelet. But learning our address wasn’t so easy. I suspect the impetus behind “make a song out of it” isn’t that it’s easier to remember the song but that a kid is quite willing to sing something they’re not normally willing to repeat. Anya wasn’t particularly excited to sing our address either, so the traditional method was out.

Instead, we play a lot of games where she buys something from me (where do you want this unicorn delivered?) or has to get a license or permit (you need a license to fly this aeroplane, certainly need a dragon permit before you can own one, construction requires zoning and building department approval) and she needs to provide her address as part of the game. While she didn’t want to repeat the address as a learning experience unto itself, she happily accepted my prompts, repeated, and memorized the information as an incidental component of the game.

Before she knew the address reliably, I made sure she knew to tell people a regionally well-known (and Google-able) fact about the town. It’s a small town, so really getting to the police here and telling them we live across from the mini golf course would suffice. Fortunately, I never had to find out if a stranger who happens across a small child lost in the woods would be willing to search for buzzard day and acquiesce to her request to call the police at the Buzzard Day township. But I figured that had a better shot than nothing to go on. Plus, I figure it’s a good fallback position if she’s panicked and unable to come up with the address.