Kings Dreams and Schemes, the story of Daniel

Wow, it's only day two of the children's music camp and I'm already exhausted! I have been helping those dear little campers learn to play hand chimes correctly and many of them are resisting my well meant suggestions. If you tell them to set the chimes on the table they bang them on the table. If you tell them to quietly pick the chimes up they promptly try and ring them and seem surprised that it makes a sound! However, when they are supposed to be playing, half of the kids suddenly lose their desire to ring the chimes and the other half seem to feel it's their duty to ring twice as loud and often to make up for the kids who aren't playing!

After four such sessions with the campers, we take a lunch break and then get to watch the little dears run around outside. Yesterday they played kickball and one of the kids hit a homerun, passing by all of the fully loaded bases and managed to be the only one who came home that play.

I have also been running the words for the songs on the projector and attempting to learn hand motions that involve a long dowel. During one of the songs three of us "teen leaders" are going to add to the effect and kneel on stage and wave dowels around. It will be dark and everyone (including those darling kids) will have white gloves on and there will be a big black light to make the gloves and dowels glow. This is going to be fun...

~Ellentia

Fish tales, fish tales, fish tales are stories that seem to good to be true!

So this last week Sunday through Wednesday our church had a musical camp for kids going into 1st-5th grades. And since my parents were running the camp, I was of course drafted. It was kinda like VBS except it was from 9:00 to 2:00 so it was a lot longer. The kids learned how to play orf instruments and how to play hand chimes while learning a musical called Fish tales. I will be singing the songs for weeks.

I got to help teach the kids how to play hand chimes. I thought that it would be relatively easy because we only had about 10 to 20 kids in each group and we only had each group for 30 min. Boy was I wrong! Getting the kids to listen instead of talking and dinging the chimes was next to impossible! The funny thing was that the older kids were the most difficult! The younger kids mostly did what we asked them to, whereas the older ones wouldn't do anything you asked them to!

I'm done complaining now.

I was amazed at how well the performance went! The kids learned the songs and the hand motions and the lead parts learned there lines and the whole production went off almost perfectly! Some of the soloists bobbled because they were nervous but other then that it was great! I am so glad the whole thing is over!

Last night we had youth and I played volleyball. I was terrible! And the worst part was that every time I made a mistake (which was quite often) jc complained at me! Even so I had a lot of fun being terrible! Well, I have to go now!

-Ellentia