Dreaming at the Waterford Public Library

Over the past couple days, I have been working with the Waterford Public Library on two separate events - "Dancing Dreams" for kids ages around 4 and 5 and "In your Dreams Workshop" for ages 10 and up. It's been a wild couple of days, and these two events have been a lot of fun.

Hard, Hard, Hard work.... I learned a lot from the Dancing Dreams workshop. It is incredible how much children can teach us, and with over 50 participants, I had a lot of teachers. Never did I anticipate that many children attending, and if I had another group as large as that one, I would do things a little differently.

For instance, when you ask a group of 20 children to go around the circle and share a movement to introduce themselves it doesn't take nearly as long as it does for a group of over 50. I had a lot of help and support from librarian Tricia Cox who kept me on track and who always keeps up my confidence. The kids did great, and they stayed with me. They shared with me some of their dreams about being princesses, swimming with sharks and other animals, being transformers, seeing aliens, and future goals of being police officers and firemen.

But I might try a different approach. In the future, I will start with the reading of the story "Waking Up is Hard to Do" by Neil Sadaka then go into a warm up. Honestly, I think the kids were really excited to be read a story. Also, I wouldn't have them in a circle, but in lines facing me with enough space to move. The circle made it difficult to move freely with such a large group of young ones. Then I would probably have some of my own choreography about dreams to lead them with, and then ask for volunteers to make up some extra choreography about what their dreams may be.

OVER 50 participants!!!!! Even with a few difficulties, the kids really seemed to have a good time dancing and reading at the library.

Now with my other event for the teen program, I had a lot of fun as a guest in the workshop. I helped open their dream interpretation workshop with some breathing exercises which were a lot of fun. And I was surprised at all the laughing, and how it really opened up the group to relax and feel comfortable.

We then did some steps for relaxation that I picked up from my T'ai Chi class last semester with Tom Ryan. I got them to focus on themselves, and take some tools with them on how to deal with stress. Afterwards, the Librarian Emily Scherrer took charge as we all built our own dream journals, made dream pillows, and were introduced to books on how to interpret dreams.

The Waterford Public Library never fails to amaze me. Over the years, I have always been impressed, but have come to realize that even more so the library has never ceased to inspire me along with others.