After getting sick the previous week, I was so happy to return to the wonderful kids at Birkdale for one last music class of the year. After sharing some favourite songs of the week, we started off with a great vocal warmup and tuneup, and the kids sang the song that they had been practicing: Hold My Hand, by Michael Jackson and Akon. They sounded great, and after a bit more tuning and some gentle encouragement, they sounded even better. Then we incorporated some stepping and clapping and they sounded EVEN better. It's so great to see the kids get into the music via movement. We then did a rhythm passing circle, and finished off with some rhythm exercises on the castanets. These castanets (and some stickers that they were very excited about) were their end of session gifts, and I'm so glad I got to see the kids using them all together.  Some of them were very adept at clicking the castanets with both hands in separate rhythms, and other kids were amazing at clicking them in unison incredibly fast. We left some time for the kids to fill out evaluations, and some of their comments nearly brought me to tears. Hope to sing with these kids again in the new year!