Preschool Music Exploration Lesson at Mandeville Music and Drama School

Shiya has her first trial lesson at Mandeville.

I am amazed how many parents and kids filled up the school on Sat morning, which gets to show that this school is far more popular than I would imagine.

Apparently, this is not only Shiya's first lesson, as many of her classmates, seemed clueless just like her.

The lesson stared off with the teacher trying to get to know the kids' names. It get off to a slow start, as the teacher seems to be surprised to see that the kids do not have a book in their bags, or their names labeled on the bags. My girl does not have any bag as we wanted to try her out first. After these were somehow haphazardly settled with the teacher writing their names with a marker, and rushing out to the counter to collect the books, the teacher gather all the children together, and start warming them up to a song about 3 monkeys and an alligator, using hand and finger puppets. The kids seem enchanted.

Then she distributed one bean bag to each children, and taught them to shake it, while moving round the room doing all kinds of actions while singing the song. You can see how excited Shiya gets once she gets into action!

After singing the song, the teacher sat every0ne down and started to distribute the books to the kids. By mistake, she gave a copy to Shiya as it slipped her mind that she was on trial lesson, unlike others. Wheh she realised her mistake, she apologised to Shiya and hastily took it back from her. Shiya seemed shock to see her teacher took it back but she did not make any noise. At that moment, I was ready to see her wail. True enough, when she realised that teacher is giving to everyone else but not her, she broke into loud cry and ran to me.

The teacher taken aback by her reaction and felt really bad. She tried to cheer her by giving her some stickers, but it would not help. Shiya wanted a book like everyone else. So I asked the teacher to give her the book by assuring her that I will sign her up for the course after the lesson. The moment the teacher handed Shiya the book, she stopped her cry and was very happy again.

Right after the lesson, I settled the payment for the remainder of the course. The payment includes a bag with some percussion music instruments and the book. You should see how happy Shiya was when she carried the bag with so much pride. Glad she likes the lesson so much.