Day 2 Zumix

Before beginning I would like to give a shout-out to Laura and Emily for making today possible :)

Today was great! Very productive and creative-- these kids are talented! The only downside of the day is that they came in 15 minutes late, so I would recommend, at least for next week, asking them to be here around 11:45am. Just a thought.

The day began with a couple of warm-up exercises that Laura led, the first a "follow the energy/movement" exercise that sent a movement around a circle, and the second one that asked students (and teachers) to pair up and maintain a conversation through gibberish, animal movements, strange movements and from across the room, in various combinations.

We then did the famous character exercise and a lot of great character drawings came out. The kids were certainly eager to share their reasons behind the intricate drawings, and the discussion worked well. However, they seemed to grow a little tired of everybody describing their characters because each person went, but it was fun because each kid was eager to do so.

We (finally) did the telephone lyric writing exercise, which turned oftentimes into a silly and far out deviation from the original. Once everybody read the actual "songs" the kids would usually end up roaring in laughter seeing the changes. Though some of the changes turned out a little less coherent than others, the next step, breaking them into groups of 3, 3, and 2, put them to the task of editing some of the parts they had created as a group and put them together into a single song per group.

The groups came up with some great songs that they shared at the end with the rest of the group. Laura was wonderful at improvising with the piano and the guitar to guide them through their presentations, and gave them interesting ideas as to how they could add some melodies to their lyrics. We had a cute little ballad, a hip-hoppish, call-and-response song (the sun is like a flower, the sky is like a bubble) and a rock/blues one sung to the melody of Bad to the Bone. They should rehearse and finalize these songs over the next days, they were truly creative! These kids are definitely lots and lots of fun.

By the end the kids wanted another fun moving-about type of exercise, but we didn't have more time. Emily, they were clamoring for the machine-building, so maybe you should do it again tomorrow!

Cheers for a wonderful day!

--Nathalie