One of my favorite things about teaching at Windham Christian Academy is when I get to do chapel services for the various grade levels.  This week I did chapel for the Kindergarten through sixth grades.  Our enrollment is up this year, so it was nice to see a chapel full of kids and teachers.  

8:30 is not the best time to start a show, and it showed in my opening routine.  There were several drops in a routine with three and four balls to the W's song "the Devil is Bad".  None the less, I definitely want to continue developing this routine.  After this, I hit my stride.In among this routine and my devil stick, apples and balance board routines, I did several new illusions. I did the multiplying bottles to retell the account of Jesus turning water into wine, and I didn't my new version of Phillip and the Ethiopian for only the second time.  I also did the psychic block for the first time ever.  I've wanted this one ever since reading Arnold Carl Westphal's classic routine "Bill Block, the Brooklyn Brat".  My patter was very different from his, and I think it was both entertaining and meaningful.

It was nice to have this time with students who will be in my class in the future.  After chapel was over, three sixth grade boys asked me if I would help them learn magic for the school talent show auditions, which were the next day!  I brought some props to school the next day, and built a routine just in time for the post-dismissal auditions.  The whole routine is built around the gag of a giant jug of Miracle Grow.  This in turn makes a drinking straw 8 feet long, confetti into large silks, a marshmallow into a 50 foot mouth coil, and and small stuffed stuffed rabbit into a full sized live one.  The show is later this week, and I think the boys will do great.