Last day!

It was my last day for this session at North York Women's Shelter, so we made sure to get in all our favourite songs! My personal favourite with the group has been Walk, Walk, Stop. I love when I sing "stop" and we all freeze in silly positions – it's incredibly fun (and hard not to laugh at some of the faces that are made!) We also played with the frogs as our special instruments of the week, which were a huge hit! I will certainly miss playing with that group of kids and moms each week!

Slap on the ground!

It's always wonderful to have the opportunity to watch the babies at Jessie's Centre grown and change and develop. Many of them are between four and 12 months old, so every week there are new changes in them. The past couple weeks we've had a little guy discover his love for slapping his hands on the floor. We do a lot of Roly Poly and Hands Together, Hands Apart at Jessie's, but even more so recently, just so this little one will have the opportunity to smile big and slap on the floor along with the rest of us!

Fantastic Frog Faces!

This week's class at Robertson House was so energetic and fun! With so many participants, it was bound to be a rambunctious class. One particularly memorable moment was watching all the young ones working so hard to scrunch their faces up for the Little Green Frog song, then enthusiastically sticking their tongues out on the beat. It's so great to see kids and parents really following along and putting their all into it. Looking forward to more great classes!

Sunny Day!

We had a very sunny morning at Birkdale, with exciting songs and smiling faces. As it often does, Little Green Frog got lots of giggles from kids and grown-ups alike. Without a cloud in the sky, or in our hearts, we simulated a rain storm by making rainy sounds with our hands, mouths, and the floor. We had a little help from one of our instruments of the week – the rain stick. We also had accompaniment from the xylophone to sing Thunder Pounding. Each child got a few turns on both instruments, and didn't want to put them away! Lots of fun throughout the jam and parachute time, with squeals of delight!

Listen to the Water

While we tend to do very active songs with this energetic group, another song that is also a big hit, and requested every single week, is Listen to the Water. Every week I'm impressed by the range of animals the kids come up with to sing in the song! This week we had a water snake, a "prickly fish" and a dolphin. We seem to challenge ourselves to come up with new animals instead of using ones we've said before – it's great!

Up, Up, Up!

Today was a great day at Jessie's Centre! A number of the moms who are part of the school program at Jessie's were present and really got into play with their babes. Because the kids were all fairly small, we did a lot of songs where our hands went up or the kids themselves went up – songs like Roly Poly, The Grand Old Duke of York, and Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. We also got right into Walk, Walk, Stop, where a number of the babies would giggle every time we sang the word ‘Stop!’

In Sync!

This week's class at Robertson House was a total thrill! It was so awesome to see the group marching in sync around in a circle with such enthusiasm. This came during our rendition of How Now Brown Cow. The kids and parents alike loved stopping and starting when singing about red lights and green lights for the bicycle verse, and followed the lead of the music very well. A great turnout from children and parents made for our liveliest class yet. Looking forward to the coming classes!

Baila, Baila - Dance, Dance!

Great energy at Birkdale today. We sang all of our transportation songs in a medley with How Now Brown Cow. In fact, this song was so loved that one of the moms asked why it's not on the RSF CD! Our instruments of the week were the Cowbell and the Agogo. We passed them both around, playing different rhythms along to some Latin music. The kids got very into this, to the point that even the quietest children were up and dancing around through parachute time. We all really felt the music in our bodies today!

Sharing and Caring

This week's class at Gooch was full of fun little moments. Though a little conflict resolution was needed at times to make sure everyone got a fair turn with the various instruments, every child seemed to have a very positive experience. The climax of the class was when all the kids and grown-ups were eagerly bending their knees, moving up and down in anticipation of "blast off" during Zoom Zoom Zoom. It really felt like the whole group was engaged and enjoying themselves. Looking forward to the rest of the session!

Bouncing Around!

Today's group was smaller than usual, but had the energy of a large group! Our singing time got us up and moving a lot. We did the Hokey Pokey, we hopped like bunnies (and frogs!) and we stood up and spun around with What Are You Wearing? One of the best parts today, though, was singing "Well you walk, and you walk, and you walk, and you STOP" and then coming up with the silliest frozen positions we possibly could every time we stopped!