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A playfully engaging movement based music program, CircleSing!
is all about opening up opportunities to develop skills and find joy in creative communication.
Each event offers you and/OR your children a one-of-a-kind opportunity to play together,
have fun and learn something new. Working with my original creations, music and games from around the world
and time-honoured favourites in rhyme and song, CircleSingers explore
distinctions in sound and rhythm, learn about language and share stories and ideas.
Rhythm draws the human ear
Right from the very start.
We all recall our first love song;
Our mother's beating heart.
CircleSing! Workshops and Events offer a unique and exciting opportunity to enjoy
our attraction to the rhythm and the rhyme and explore it with our communities - small and large, by:
- Demonstrating and exploring all the elements of sound play, dance and storytelling.
- Using rhythm and rhyme in creative ways.
- Introducing the patterns that make learning easier.
- Building confidence in oral language and musical competence.
- Offering fun, interesting and ever-evolving opportunities for repetition, which builds fluency.
- Promoting social interaction and building a sense of community,
which helps to develop self-esteem.
- Serving as a creativity prompt, offering everyone the chance to experiment
with their own variations on well-known themes.
- Providing an opportunity for parents and caregivers to focus on developmental play,
to notice patterns in learning and behaviour and to provide active support.
- Offering families fun opportunities to relax, play and grow together .
- All the while building a mental storage of songs, stories, games and activities
to enjoy whenever the mood strikes.
How we participate relies very much on where we are, individually and as a group, in the moment. For
adults, workshops are a great opportunity to demonstrate appropriate behaviours
in a simple and supportive environment - we have the time and space for consideration for the group's
activities, focus and attention,
celebration of the moment. Each group brings
it's own unique energy to a CircleSing! Event in just the
same way as
each individual brings their energy to the group. A safe space, filled with attention
and joy makes it possible for us to fully explore.t
Some boundaries are tried and true.
Your opportunity to rest comes from my vigilance around those
boundaries, my awareness, my empathy and ability to mediate and help to
avoid and/or soothe distress.
Of course, I need you to be vigilant too - but I can help us all through it when the going gets rough, and I can help avoid the rough stuff too! Many boundaries can be settled by the
group as a whole (yes! even the children!), all while providing still more opportunities for fun and educational exploration as we make our way on our fantastical, magical, musical journey together.
While I'm constantly considering the similarities in children's natural inclinations toward development,
I'm also full in the moment of each child's unique developmental experience. Some one year olds are
exceedingly verbal while some three year olds are, while interested,
painfully shy. Some 4 year olds love to play with younger children and
some are constantly looking for activities
that provide a greater
challenge. Sometimes older kids are quite skilled but lack confidence and sometimes they're quite skilled and yearn for opportunities to show us!
You know your family better than anyone else,
so always feel free to enquire about a program regardless of its restrictions if you think it would be appropriate for you and your
child.
Hi! I'm jennielea! ...
For the last 10 years (! I can hardly believe it !) I've been spreading my exclamation points around
as the Artistic Director of CircleSing! Workshops and Events!
I'm really, really at peace when I'm singing and dancing. Even when you see me acting all crazy! I have found
that it's even more enjoyable in a crowd and the ease I feel in bringing people together to expand on that special joy is extremely comforting and refreshing. I feel very blessed to have found this way to share my passion...
and very blessed for the people I have found to share it with me. It's during these activities and among these people that I've found some of the most powerful examples of truly balanced and harmonious social interaction,
the most beautiful exchanges of kindness and consideration, the sweetest sounds and the hottest moves!
Sometimes people struggle, and that's lovely too because I get to see them struggle all the way through
(often it's not very far!) to the other side where they don't have to struggle any more!
I'm an autodidact. I love to learn. In fact, I taught myself how to make this website! I'm always hungry for more information and eager to dig it out on my own. That might be why I relate so well to Toddlers. I'm perpetually in that place, with them, of being adamant about knowing more, experiencing more, growing more, expressing more... and I always get distracted by play!
Especially if it means I might learn how to do something new! And around and around we all go...
In recent years, I've been defining focus for the way CircleSing! programming fits into the world. I began by offering a rather simple song circle with a strong emphasis on introducing the basics of music and storytelling through movement for the very young. My work with a variety of communities led me to recognize, early on, the value of "The Circle" in the area of socio-emotional development. Further exploration opened programming to include pure and exciting entertainment , workshops children of all ages, and programming for adults as well. It has all unraveled very naturally, as I've met with people in various communities who led me to new ideas, and on to other communities.
As I have collaborated - and continue to collaborate - with a wide variety of organizations committed to
providing high quality community arts programming , education and socio-emotional support, my ability to uncover and fulfill community needs and desires continue to blossom. The more I learn, the more I want to know...and the more I experience, the stronger my desire to share with others that elation that comes from all of us playing together.
I create and develop much of my programming through my continued explorations in musical, literary and socio-emotional development with others. Everyone with whom I share it helps create it too. I receive as much from the communities I serve as I can possibly give back. It's a lovely cycle and I'm excited to see what the future may hold as I head into the next 10 years of making CircleSing! memories and watching my own beautiful daughter grow into a beautiful young woman! (Ack! Weirdness! It's ok, though - I handle weirdness every day! )
A perpetual student, jennielea is constantly examining (through private and collective studies) the world we live in and the way we choose to live in it. Through music, dance, storytelling and drama she attempts to find and create understanding, acceptance and cohesiveness in communities wherever she goes.
Professionally, jennielea has had the good fortune to sing and play a variety of music (from classical to punk) for a wide range of communities in Canada and abroad, televised and live from 1984 until the present. She has greatly enjoyed her role as a sometimes silly, often noisy messenger of the universal sub-concious.
Her training includes piano and opera study at the Royal Conservatory of Music, orchestral and choral training and performance through O.C.I
and Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, clown and movement theatre training at the Theatre Resource Centre, ECE training at the YMCA and ECME training through
the Royal Conservatory of Music,
countless hours of continued workshop and private training
in piano, viola, theatre, dance, prose, poetry, psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology and most importantly, her connections with musicians, singers, storytellers, writers, educators, painters, sculptors, clowns, poets, philosophers, children, family, friends and strangers who have emerged in her life
to generously share their knowledge and wisdom.
Alpha Alternative School
Brown Community Centre
Drum Artz Studios
High Park
Hillside Festival
Pedestrian Sunday Kensington Market
SambaKidz
Swansea Town Hall
St. Joseph's Childbirth and Parenting Centre
Toronto Parks and Recreation
Thorncliffe Ontario Early Years Centre
Toronto Pride Parade - Family Pride
Toronto Lawn Tennis Club
Tottenham Blue Grass Festival
YMCA FDC and Daycares
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