Singing with the Nursery Children

IW and Action Man

It’s been some time now since the beginning of this school year but we would like to share with you our first week of singing with the nursery and upper nursery classes. We never imagined that singing would be such an exhausting exercise.

Most of you know that the Principal asked us if we would be happy to help out in the school this year. Naturally we were delighted to accept. She asked if I would do singing with the nursery classes, if Gary would do some computer skills with 8s and 9s and if both of us would teach a sort of “Life Skills” class to the Year 12s.

On Thursday morning at 9:00 am (day 1), armed with Gary (hereafter known as Action Man) and my guitar, we were taken to the first of four nursery classes (about 50 kids under 5 in each class) only to discover that we were in fact the distraction to keep the children occupied while parents slipped out the back door.

50% of the kids were crying, 5% were screaming, 35% were sitting there like stunned mullets, and the other 10% were actually relatively pleased to see us. We racked our brains to think up nursery rhymes and songs for littlies and ‘Praise the Lord!’ - “Twinkle Twinkle”, “Mary had a little lamb” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep” sprang quickly to mind.

After that we wowed them with “The Wheels on the Bus” where 4 kids joined in with the actions, the little ones who were crying stopped in amazement at our antics but started again after we had finished and the screamers just kept screaming. Next, we found that we could stretch “If you’re happy and you know it” out for about 10 verses with lots of actions with the same 4 kids joining in and the same kids crying and screaming. You would be surprised how handy Action Man has become at doing actions while nursing a crying child and trying to fix a play telephone for another little boy. “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” worked a treat (for the 4 kids anyway) and after that we went off to the next class.

It was pretty much the same with all four classes. We were exhausted at the end of an hour and were thankful that they said we could go because we thought we could go and have a rest. WRONG! The Deputy saw us coming out of the last room and said “now I will take you to the upper nursery class.” We went to the other side of the playground and were taken into a small classroom crammed with about 150 kids under the age of 6.

Mmm!! What to do here! At least there were only a couple crying. We were told that they all understood English but either they didn’t understand my accent or most of them don’t understand English. This makes things a tad more difficult when you’re trying to teach songs. Well we didn’t think we could go wrong with “The wheels on the bus” so that is what we started with. At 10:30 am after 90 minutes of full on singing and action we retreated to our house for a well earned rest.

After a few days it was apparent that IW's voice could not handle this pace although Action Man was going from strength to strength because of the daily 90 minute aerobic sessions. Times were renegotiated and we have settled into a good three day pattern with all classes.

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It is now four weeks into term and the singing continues with very positive feedback from parents and teachers. The littlies greet us enthusiastically in the playground and eagerly introduce us to their parents which is very nice.

Here are some photos of the kids.

None of the other classroom opportunities have eventuated as they rely entirely on the Principal organising the times. We have spoken to her on several occasions and now have left it to her.

Photos by AM, Sam and Makarla