Look for Physics Pholk Songs by David and Ginger Hildebrand. I have the CD and they have 14 physics songs - not rap for sure. Entertaining and pretty accurate. You may be able to download and not need a CD.

Hello Lauren, A good beginning of the school year activity would be one that gets students thinking about the scientific progress to set the standard for the labs that would come for the rest of the year. Some ways to do this are setting up different stations that could be good for observation like, the characteristics of a flower, or even the way worms interact. You can have students make hypothesis based on their conceptions of the different stations. You can also do another exercise that can be done in perspective lab groups as a team building exercise. This consists of giving each group a handful of marshmallows and spaghetti sticks. They have to building a tower with the materials and see who's stands up the longest. Its quite a fun first day activity. Hope this helps!

Another idea is to have the students embark on a "Fantastic Voyage" based on the movie/book from the 60s. They have to "travel" through a patients body to destroy a blood clot in the patient's brain. Students can write a dramatic narrative or dialogue that incorporates factual information about body systems, they could write a computer program or animation about a voyage through the body, write a newspaper article, etc.