Ding Dong Done

I've been trying to think about what to write today, and all I can think of is that Christmas program songs are still playing on a loop in my head and that bell practice today was horrible. 

We cancelled our January singing/ringing Sunday because it's the Sunday after an away basketball tournament and lots of families said they would not be coming. We've been practicing the January songs already, but I like the February songs too, so I had to decide which to keep and discard. I flipped through the songs during recess and had a big plan to practice both February songs plus the three March ones (including one for Fine Arts Fair). 

I hate to say any class session is a disaster, but this one I'd say qualifies. First, it took them forever to get things set up. Then they couldn't find the specific songs in their folders. Then the songs weren't all highlighted. All this is somewhat normal for the first time we're looking at a song. This year I tried printing ALL the bell songs for the whole year so we could highlight them all at once. Mixed reviews. It's really nice to not highlight every month, but it was a lot to do all at once. And not everyone got everything highlighted and they forgot that they didn't, and I forgot to check in with kids, so we waste time. 

Another problem is that if I tweaked anything in their books and not mine, I don't remember because it's been so long. That was our problem today. Three kids had something different marked in their books for what they're supposed to play compared to what was noted in mine. I couldn't remember which way was right. They were all crabby and snappy. I was getting frustrated while trying to stay even-tempered... The other kids gave up and sat down, knowing it would be a long time before we played anything. They were right. We only made it through the song once. It sounded horrible because some of them didn't highlight their flats/naturals correctly. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, something fixable with practice. But two of the girls got into an argument about which notes to play, followed by a lot of hurt feelings. Because I didn't immediately punish one girl for saying something mean, the other girl yelled at me and called me a bad teacher. So I sent her to the principal.

With only five minutes to go, I wanted to end on a better note, so we flipped to "In the Hall of the Mountain King"... Which they promptly complained about playing for Fine Arts Fair... "Why can't we play 'Patapan'? That one sounds good and we know how to play it already!" The answer is, because you play it too fast! It sounds like a runaway train. (I didn't tell them that last part.) We were just about to begin playing when someone yelled out, "Oh. Mine's not highlighted." 🙄 Great. So I had everyone put their stuff away while the late highlighters highlighted. Sigh.

Praise the Lord tomorrow is Friday.