Great Things Happen When We Listen

I was warned by the staff at the front desk that the kids were extremely high energy today, so I made sure to do a bunch of physical warmups to get the energy out. The kids love the shake out exercise, and we did a round of stretches where each kid got to show us a stretch which the rest of the group would repeat. This made for great breathing exercises and vocal warm ups, which certainly helped when we did solfege, which sounded better than it ever has. The kids were really getting into the hand signs of solfege, particularly when we started going up and down the scale in double-time. The last part of the class was focused on one of the songs that the kids mentioned was a current favourite, Bang Bang by Jessie J. We listened to the song and went around the circle sharing musical elements that resonated with us, and then we learned the chorus and sang it while doing body percussion. The kids were thrilled! By our ending check-out, almost everyone said they were feeling tired, but good.