we have 18 school kids starting handbells on Tuesday - any suggestions?

[handbellnuts]

As I have told Aidan, we're starting a new group at my son's school - and we had an incredibly poor response before our main team played at the school before doing a gig for Christmas.

Registration closed Friday afternoon for school clubs and apparently we have 18 kids from Yr 1 -5 starting on Tuesday afternoon.  We're going up to the church to go through our easy pieces and bring them with us to start off with.

Any suggestions?

Oh, and if anyone is in our area and can help out, we'll probably need it!

cheers,

adrianne

[Aidan]

How did it go?

[handbellnuts]

The response from the children was phenomenal!  Daniel had to be in court, so I thought I would be on my own.  The headteacher helped out and we divided the group into two - yrs 1-2 (boomwackers) and yrs 3-5 (belleplates).  The response was wonderful!  We were ringing rounds by the end of the session and "Twinkle Twinkle little star"  The boomwackers played the song they learned with the headteacher to the Belleplates and they played their bits back.

I think the best part was having one of the Mums tell me in the playground how much her daughter enjoyed it and can't wait for next week! )

So the plan for today:  start with attendance (as you do), do some maori stick games to introduce the concept of crochets, teach the group how to hold their instruments (belleplate/handbell) since for both groups this is something new, and do some basic songs to re-enforce last week - chords, rounds, "twinkle", etc. and finish with a clip from the "Ring of Fire" DVD just to keep them inspired.

They already have a date that they are performing at our church so I need to pick out something suitable and build up and work towards that goal - but today will be focused on just learning how to hold and ring properly - I think that is the most important aspect.  This is how to "ring" and this is how to "damp".

That's it for the moment.  Although I must say I am disappointed with the complete lack of response from anyone else.... Is there no one else who has these problems?  Anyways, I'll keep you updated here each week and let you know how we're getting on. 

Thanks,

Adrianne
 

[Aidan]

Sounding great! Do you need some new music/have a budget for music? I have a couple of pieces I like and could suggest and always love an excuse to look though jeffers:P

Think there aren't many forum users left:( Come on and post people!:P

[chocohicanon]

Hi,

Hows your school group progessing? I tried starting up a group at my daughters school with yrs1&2 with a 2 octave set of bellplates last year but since it was just me, with no support from the school it proved very hard work.

I was given a 25 minuite slot at lunch time and it went well for the first few weeks but being aged 5-7yrs quite a few dropped out or forgot to turn up and by the fourth week and I was having to round them up from the playground just so we had enough ringers! then they were usually too restless to concerntrate on anything much. We would start with rounds, queens, tee-tums, ect then have a go a at simple tune (I used lots of different numbered pieces printed on big boards and each number written in it's own colour so I could point for the whole group at once) I was planning to introduce notes a little later, once they could follow the music unaided but unfortunally poor attendance and lack of support lead to an early demise of the group. It was a shame because we were starting to see some sucess.

I enjoyed the challenge but found the age group very difficult to cope with unsuported and en-mass, I hope to try again with yrs 3-4 and 5-6 sometime in the future I'll report back if I get a chance.

I Hope your little school team is enjoying themselves, I'm sure with the support your recieving you'll see much more sucess than I did, it's great to see how well it can work with the right support.