"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands." Clap, clap.
Camp Grandpa is in full swing on June 15 at Lee Senior Center in the Community Center on Lee Highway in Arlington. Lloyd Emery, grandfather of 10, strums the banjo while seven preschoolers sprawl around a circle singing familiar favorites.
Emery said, "My ultimate goal is to build up a program that I can take to cancer houses in Ronald McDonald. I'm figuring out what to do with mobile kids and then what I can do with kids who aren't mobile." He said he'd like to bring some reality, not plastic music or cartoons. "Maybe some day I'll bring a real dog and give each child a dog biscuit that he can give to the dog sometime during the program. I've heard they really like that." Emery grew up in the country where one grandfather in West Virginia had a half acre garden and fed everyone. The other grandfather had a farm in North Carolina.
Emery has been playing the guitar on and off since he was about 10 years old. He said there are always two or three children who really go for it.
"The wheels on the bus go round and round;” Adrianna Carr, director of the Lee Senior Center, is rolling her hands round and round in a big circle to the tune of the music. “I can’t sing,” Carr said, “but that doesn’t stop me.”
Emery added, “She is a natural. Some people just know what to do.” A child has toddled over to Emery's side and a small hand reaches up for the strings of the guitar.
Carr says this program started about a month ago and is meant to give an intergenerational experience. "Children enjoy coming with a grandparent and it is a bonding experience." The program is every other Monday from 10:15-11 a.m. "This is where we take the animals out, " Carr says, and "then we make the noise. 'Old McDonald Had a Farm.’ Oh oh, when we get to giraffe, we just make up a sound.” Emery says each child gets a tiger, lion, elephant, so "they feel part of the program." With a quack quack here and a thump thump there. "We just have time for one more. Good job today. See you next time."