Bob Bledsoe
Well-known member
I just got back from Camp Del Corazon on Catalina Island.
For those of you who don't know, we were able to get 13 Ohana sk-10 ukes for the camp (way more than we had a budget for) - thanks to Mim raising funds for charity, you all donating too much and Mim spending the overage on our charity. This is a camp for kids with heart disease.
It was incredible. The class was part of a "free choice" session that kids could sign up for. We had 7 kids sign up plus a couple counselors who wanted to learn. We had 13 new ukes for the camp plus 2 of mine and 4 that were brought by other people - 19 total. So we didn't start out using all the ukuleles but new kids kept leaving their other activities and coming over to join the ukulele group. By the time we finished the session, all 19 ukuleles were in use. I taught two different weeks of camp (different kids each week) and the same thing happened both weeks.
I had some help from two other counselors, which was really needed as we were dealing with kids from 7 years old to 17, plus a few adult counselors.
We ended up teaching The Lion Sleeps Tonight and performing it that night at the outdoor theater right after "skit night". It sounded great and the kids really got into it. Several kids wanted me to meet with their parents at the dock after camp to convince them to buy ukuleles for their kids ;-)
I don't have my hands on the video of the performance yet but here's a couple minutes of one of the lessons. It's just a few clips showing the progress eventually leading up to doing the song...
Notice my white board at the beginning of the video. I decided to give the session a better name than just "Ukulele Lessons"
For those of you who don't know, we were able to get 13 Ohana sk-10 ukes for the camp (way more than we had a budget for) - thanks to Mim raising funds for charity, you all donating too much and Mim spending the overage on our charity. This is a camp for kids with heart disease.
It was incredible. The class was part of a "free choice" session that kids could sign up for. We had 7 kids sign up plus a couple counselors who wanted to learn. We had 13 new ukes for the camp plus 2 of mine and 4 that were brought by other people - 19 total. So we didn't start out using all the ukuleles but new kids kept leaving their other activities and coming over to join the ukulele group. By the time we finished the session, all 19 ukuleles were in use. I taught two different weeks of camp (different kids each week) and the same thing happened both weeks.
I had some help from two other counselors, which was really needed as we were dealing with kids from 7 years old to 17, plus a few adult counselors.
We ended up teaching The Lion Sleeps Tonight and performing it that night at the outdoor theater right after "skit night". It sounded great and the kids really got into it. Several kids wanted me to meet with their parents at the dock after camp to convince them to buy ukuleles for their kids ;-)
I don't have my hands on the video of the performance yet but here's a couple minutes of one of the lessons. It's just a few clips showing the progress eventually leading up to doing the song...
Notice my white board at the beginning of the video. I decided to give the session a better name than just "Ukulele Lessons"
