The Kids Sing A Song

Sunday was a busy day. I was doing the project management for the Continuing Professional Development weekends for Guildhall again (read: moving stuff about and making sure everyone had enough tea and biscuits and lunch) but had to leave in the middle in order to get over to Kensington for the the Kid's recital.

This recital was very elaborate- the theme for this term has been "animals" and the children have been learning animal related songs, drawing pictures to be used in the programme, and writing pieces for their instruments about various animals.

In my class we wrote a song- It is called "Legato and Staccato" and I'm way super proud of it. We wrote it in a month and all of the kids were involved. I was avoiding making a structure for what they had written for the longest time, caught up in thinking "Oh, but I'm NOT a composer and it's going to sound bad, and blah blah blah" which is silly because a: it is their song and b: it was really good!

I even played piano for it. This is a big deal, I'm not a confident pianist, and this part that I wrote was very easy, but still- there were chords in the left hand, melody in the right, and I was singing and conducting the kids with my head all at the same time.

Of the five kids who showed up to the recital one was poorly with a sore throat, one had just joined the class when we started to write the song and his brother informed me in no uncertain terms that he was not prepared to perform the song, and a third is being bumped up to a higher class next term and has decided to distance himself from the rest of us. So there were two singers, and though we were a small group- we were mighty. Gap toothed smiles and everything. (C. was very excited to be singing, very excited to have just lost her first tooth that morning, and kept grinning all day long.)

Today in my singing lesson with Jilly she asked me how my teaching had been going. I excitedly told her about the success that the song had been on Sunday and then played/sang it for her. Because it is *such* a charming little tune, she asked me if she could put it up on her song resource website. Isn't that so cool? And such an honor? When it goes up, I'll let you all know.