Harry Gosling Primary School

I really want the first half of this primary school's name to be Hairy instead of Harry because then you'd get a hilariously shaggy baby goose. And that would be fun.

Today was our 3rd and final week at Harry Gosling. Last week was bit of a dud because the kids we were meant to be working with had testing, so we had a bunch of year ones instead. This week we were back to our original batch- and man, I liked them.

We decided at the last minute to go ahead and try for a performance even though we hadn't had the second week in order to create much more material. So in order to pull together a piece we spent about 30 min reviewing the rhythms from two weeks ago and then split into two groups: one instrumental and one vocal.

Glynn wrote a very simple melody and then I got half the kids together to make up words about whatever we felt like. I figured talking about school would be a good way to go so we wrote a song about what their favorite classes are and what they do after school and the like.

My favorite part of these workshops so far has been when I get a batch of 6-12 kids on my own and then I get to manage the group however I please. So in this case when someone made a joke, I allowed time for giggling instead of immediately hollering at them to be quiet because we're working here! And I never told them that they were being rude, because even if they were- they're eight years old- the whole point of being eight is to be squirrely. I called on the quiet ones, ignored the loud ones until they actually had something to say, mixed up the seating arrangements constantly to mix up the boys and girls and also keep the chatty people away from the other chatty people.

And then, because we were efficient and got the words written and learned quickly, we sang "Hey, My Name is Joe" which is one of those additive songs where you end up jumping around a lot and then collapsing into a little giggly heap. My favorite.