The following September, Alfie started attending a local Montessori School, three hours per morning five days a week. It was also at this time that a couple of the women who were running another playgroup in the area went into business and opened Cafe O’Play, a playcafe open four days a week offering free play for the little ones and excellent coffee and homemade cakes for the grown ups. They asked if I would do ‘something’ there, one morning a week. With all the free time I had in the mornings with Alfie being in Montessori I, of course, jumped at the chance, it was either that or do housework! The only problem was, I wasn’t sure what that ‘something’ was going to be. I am a firm believer in the value of free play for toddlers and the benefits of children initiating their own activities. This builds confidence, initiative, imagination and independence etc, much more than adult lead, organised activities do (in my opinion). With this in mind I set out my golden rule for everything I have ever done when playing music in a free play environment; the children have to choose to join in with my activity and if they don’t want to join in, then that’s ok, it’s their choice. This was all well and good, but it meant that I was in direct competition with all kinds of toys, ride on cars, Megablox and even a f*@#ing bouncy castle!! I had no idea what I was doing. Each week I would try new routines, desperately trying to find something that would hold the kids attention. On several occasions I was left singing songs to about 3 mums smiling at me in awkward sympathy while all the kids were off running around and playing.
While at Montessori, Alfie made a friend. A best friend. It turned out that Alfie’s best friend’s mum also ran a Playcafe over at Killester Football Club. When she heard about what I was doing with the Playgroup and at Cafe O’Play, she invited me down for a trial session to see what it was all about. As usual I was terribly nervous at the prospect of having, what seemed to be, an audition and a job interview rolled into one, but luckily, Celine was impressed enough to offer me a weekly slot at Little Monkeys Playcafe. Having two playcafe gigs a week, meant that I was now getting twice as much time to develop, refine and perfect a style and routine that would keep kids engaged for a full 40mins despite all the distractions around them (including bouncy castles!). Slowly but surely, I found a format and style that worked (be loud, jump up and down a lot and, if in doubt, blow bubbles), my playcafe sessions began getting busier and busier and as a result, more people became aware of my Friday Rainbow Music for Kids classes and they began to fill up too!
It was around this time I set up my Facebook page – ‘Phil from Rainbow Music’ – I wanted a way to let people know when and where they could see me, what we will be doing on the Friday Rainbow Music For Kids classes and also share interesting articles relating to early years childcare and the benefits of music. I gained a handful of likes on my page quite quickly and it seemed to help spread the word of what I was doing.
Once the word was out, it seemed as though I would get a phone call every time a new playcafe opened in Dublin and slowly but surely my mornings became busier and busier. After a while I started to realise that everyone was calling me “Rainbow Phil” – I decided to embrace it and changed the name on my Facebook page from “Phil from Rainbow Music” to “Rainbow Phil”