Energy!

It was nice to be back at the Gooch Family Drop-In Centre today. There were some new faces (both kids and grown-ups), as well as a big group of kids and parents that I recognized from last week. We started out with the "Hello" song, and I realized right away that singing to each individual child wasn't an option with over 30 kids. Instead, I sang hello to girls, to boys, to moms, to dads and to grown-ups. I did the turtle song with them--having brought in the puppet--and they had a lot of fun with it. We did the song as a call and response and the response was huge! It's wonderful how much participation there is in this group. The instrument of the week was a little bit of a challenge today. We did the Guiro, and they loved it! The only thing that's a little bit tricky is making sure each child gets to try it and gauging how many kids still need to play it while I'm singing its accompaniment song. Yufeng and the other staff members helped out a lot with passing and tried to ensure that each child got a chance. I brought in 3 Guiros, which is usually plenty but with the size of the group, I really think I will need to start bringing 4-5 of each instrument, if it's possible. For the parachute today, I wasn't able to get over to the CD player so we sang "Red, and Yellow, Green and Blue" and then I got the kids to 'pretend to sleep' underneath while we sang "Twinkle Twinkle." This helped to calm the group before our goodbye song.

It was a really fun and energetic day overall, and I'm looking forward to joining them all again next week!