The Do-Re-Mi of Singing is as Easy as 1-2-3

I am sitting on a mountain side in Austria where the Sound of Music was filmed, in exactly the same spot Maria was teaching the Von Trapp children to sing. But instead of Maria teaching the children to sing, I am. We start off with learning the solfedge of singing, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. The children's faces are glowing as they learn the melodic scale. I continue with more exercises of going up and down the scale and as the day goes on, they learn to harmonize using the musical scale. But I see that one child in the back is becoming frustrated with the syllables, so I then teach the children the hand movements with each note. He seems to understand the process a little better but is still very confused. And then I thought of course I will teach the song that Maria sings in the movie, "Do-Re-Mi." The children immediately catch on and stand up and start dancing. We are all dancing down the mountain side into Vienna, laughing and singing and having fun. The children decide to perform their own rendition of the song and put on a concert for the crowd in the middle of town. After they are done performing I sit them all down and we discuss what we have learned about singing and the musical scale and they told me that learning do-re-mi is as easy as one-two-three!