New school near 5th St.

This was my second visit with these kids at the new site of Holy Infancy. I checked back to what I did a month ago so I wouldn’t repeat myself, but also to see what the kids retained from that session. At the beginning of the session, I asked what they remembered and was glad to hear Tutti Tah, Giants, Peanut Butter, Down by the Bay, I Wanna Be a Dog and Spider on the Floor. That was a really good sign of retention.

I started with Water Melon on the Vine to see if they could handle the slurp. They did fine and it was a good, loose way to re-introduce myself to them. I followed with Spider on the Floor and explored some different body parts (hip, shoulder, cheek, ear, hat), trying to keep the focus on rhymes. (The younger kids had tough time through out the session, but that’s why this is valuable work for them – the teachers appreciate it.)

We did Tutti Tah and I brought up two of the quieter kids to do it with me and you could see them take a shine to being up front of their classmates. It’s important to share the lead with songs we’ve done before. I did Peanut Butter and Jelly, a new one for these kids, with getting the boys up, the girls up – really active and fun.

I introduced Names to the Animals and had some fun with that, again, pressing the rhymes in the third and fourth verses. I promised to do some new ones next time: manatee (Mrs.Perez came up with “insanity”!!), mouse, tiger, lion, monkey.

I finished up with my scarf set with Jelly in the Dish – again, new to these kids and these teachers. It’s a really strong exercise as we go through the “disappearing”, facial emotions, letters of the alphabet and finally the dancing, sharing, etc. I noticed that even if the pre-K don’t know how to do the letter-painting, there’s lots of color and movement involved so they have a good time anyway. The first graders get it right away.

I asked the three teachers what they appreciated and they agreed the rhyming skills are important and the scarf set was good as well.

I left energized on a Monday afternoon on the SouthSide. I’ll be back for a Christmas assembly for the whole school and back in January with this group.