Note to readers:
Sorry I’ve been missing in action.
I’m trying to figure out what kind of blogging schedule I can actually keep, what I actually want to blog about, and I’m even going to be simplifying the blog look a bit!
I’ve decided I want to share much more about writing here.
Writing prompts, and lots of writing too.
So I’ve come up with this:
The Sunday Song Journal,
inspired by this awesome book I read lately,
Songs For A Teenage Nomad.
The main character has a song journal,
and I thought it is such a great idea for a writing prompt.
We all have songs that make us think of something.
So I’ll be sharing a song with you,
and a small story,
every Sunday.
Feel free to play along if you’d like!
You can do your own song journal piece
and write it down or think about it
and share it or not share it.
Whatever you’d like.
Here’s the first one.
The song: STEP IN TIME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-b_GJ4ltk
The story:
24 years old,
two years out of school,
and I was back in my hometown,
working at the daycare center I worked at
while I was in college.
This time I wasn’t floating between classrooms;
I had my own.
12 1.5-2 year olds.
The best age in my opinion.
Since my hometown is in Northern NY,
there are seasons that make playing outside difficult
and time consuming.
Luckily we had a big room (aptly called THE BIG ROOM)
that we had time in each day.
The BIG ROOM had lots of space to run around,
fun things to play with,
and even things to climb on.
It also had a record player with LOTS of fun records.
At some point I got stuck on the Mary Poppins record,
and kept repeating STEP IN TIME.
Yes, going over and setting it to play again.
Repeating is a bit trickier with a record player!
My strategy with the kids in the BIG ROOM
was to let them explore;
of course I was still watching them
but the rest of the day we lead them through activities.
Here I wanted them to do what they wanted,
and they did, with me watching to make sure they were safe.
This left me my hands and feet
usually available to dance with
(unless someone was hurt or sick and I was holding them, but if that were the case, I’d try to dance a little anyway!)
So when STEP IN TIME came on,
I would act out ALL the motions!
“Kick your knees up!”
turned into high knees.
“Round the chimney”
was circling around an imaginary chimney.
“Flap like a birdie”
was pretty easy.
“Up on the railing”
resulted in standing with feet hip width apart,
then jumping one foot over to the other one.
“Over the rooftops”
was a BIG jump,
And “link your elbows”
was just what it sounds like.
So I’d do all these dances
to keep myself entertained and in shape
and of course the kids loved them too.
Pretty soon they were doing their own adorable versions
of each of the moves,
and I was SUPER impressed.
The music sounds the same for each section,
but they must have recognized the words.
They got SO EXCITED when they heard the song come on,
so excited that every time we went to the BIG ROOM (sometimes twice a day)
they wanted to hear it and we would dance.
It got to the point
where we had a pretty great and adorable
choreography going,
and we were thinking about doing it
for the Christmas assembly,
but sadly it never panned out.
Actually, maybe not so sadly.
It was pretty magical for us to have
our little song that we danced to,
not because we wanted people to watch us,
but just because it was so FUN.
And of course when I hear that song now,
I think about those tiny kids,
The record player,
The BIG ROOM that is
on the other side of the country from where I live now,
and how fun it is to just let go and DANCE.
