New faces

In contrast to last week's smaller group, the Genoa room was packed on Friday. There were a few brand new faces, which made for a great "hello" song, as it was a good chance for some of the new kids to be introduced to their peers and get some of their jitters out as they were encouraged to participate by some of the more seasoned kids. There were a lot of bouncing and movement songs this week (I rearranged the order of things to accommodate some restless jumpers who didn't want to sit). By the end of the movement, some kids were even remarking that they wanted to sit down and do a capella songs, which is usually one of the biggest struggles of class. This group loves the instruments in the bag, but jam time can tend to get a bit unruly and there was a little bit of fighting over instruments, which dropped the focus for the latter part of the class. However, when it came time to put things away and sing the goodbye song, everyone was sitting close and attentively, though more than a few kids tried to play my guitar as I was playing. I think next week I'll come a bit earlier and let them strum the guitar before class so they don't interrupt during songs.