Watching

Fun at Leith Walk

Today us Music in the Community students had our third session at Leith Walk Primary School. We’ve been visiting them every Wednesday for the past few weeks, not only to work with the Primary 7s on Watching but also to write some songs with the other classes on the theme of sleep; these will then be performed at their school concert next month.

We usually start by warming up and having some fun altogether in the hall. Today we played a variation on one of our favourite games, Rollercoaster, which had everyone pretending to be marshmallows and experiencing “zero gravity” in no time (not simultaneously, of course!). Once everyone was giggling and raring to go, we all went off to our classrooms to polish up our songs.

Each class wrote a set of poems based around sleep and night-time, and we chose a winner from each class whose poem we would set to music. For example, Joanna from P5/6 wrote a fantastic poem about trying to go to sleep when she’s not tired, and Laura, Ollie, Christie, Polly and Jess K have added a beautifully relaxing melody featuring talented solo singers and instrumentalists from the class. We’ve all pushed our creativity to its limit, with some classes even inventing weird and wonderful instruments, from bottle flutes to musical dreamcatchers, to accompany their songs. We can’t wait to hear how they all sound in the concert next month!

And of course, we cannot forget the stars of Watching – Primary 7. They have been working hard with Katy, Tim, Jess B, Ciara and Dee to learn the songs for the show, and with the help of Skye and Gerda have started to introduce costumes, props and choreography into rehearsals, which is really making the show come to life. It’s only 35 days until our first performance and we couldn’t be more excited!

It’s half-term next week so pupils at Leith Walk will get a much deserved rest, but our work continues as we’ll be going to explore the Botanics and imagine how it’ll be transformed next month…

Photos by Andy Catlin