NATC15 Youth Program Workshop#2 Taiko FUNdamentals

The long awaited North American Taiko Conference 2015 was finally here! This time I had the wonderful opportunity to lead the Youth Program and taught 2 workshop sessions for the program. Here is the video from workshop session 2 "Taiko FUNdamentals" on Saturday 13 June 2015. It was a lot of fun for me to work with children from age 5-11. The challenge was to accommodate different age and taiko skill level in the same workshop. It was in fact a lot of fun for me to teach some games and materials that I have always wanted to try but never got a chance. Each session is 2.5 hours, that gives me a lot of time to develop the materials. They did really great!

 

Song: Mochitsuki

original song "Mochi Megane"
adapted and arranged by Yuri Kanamaru

(For Youth Program parents, if you'd like to review the song, here is the link to the blog post on Mochitsuki)

Hopscotch game as learned from Estêvão Marques in SF Orff Master Class 2013
Cup game as learned from Sofia Lopez Ibor in SF Orff Level I 2011

In the past 4 years of Orff training, I've learned a lot of great games and teaching skills from amazing teachers like Estevao and Sofia. Today being able to created my own version combining those games and songs for the youth taiko class has been a great achievement and experience. It is very rewarding to see all my students able to perform those skills within a short amount time while having lots of fun learning.

 

Another way to play the hopscotch is to jump in double time (similar to what Mio attempt to do near the end); and have 4 persons doing it on each side.