It's the Easter holidays and I'm often asked if this is a nice quiet time for me at Perform. Well, it's definitely quiet in the sense that we only have our holiday workshops running and not our normal workshops, but actually the holidays are probably my busiest time of the year because this is the time when we get a chance to plan for the following term and make sure that everyone's clued-up and ready to go.

I've always been determined to keep Perform centrally run and not to expand by franchising not least because I don't want to spend my time selling the idea of an "easy flexible part-time income" to potential franchisees. I'd much rather spend it finding new ways to help shy children be more confident, boisterous children be more focused and get all children having fun and making friends.

From my point of view, that means working with our wonderful Area Partners honing our curriculum and training our teachers how to put it into practice. And as you can imagine, with over 200 venues and 200 teachers, this takes up quite a bit of time so the holidays are the ideal time.

Currently we are perfecting the Mermaids & Pirates (for 4-8s) and Bluebeard's Bride (for 8-12s) themes, learning the songs and making sure that the actions for the poems are all learnt and suitable for the teachers. The Area Partners record them and then all the teachers have the holidays to learn everything ready for a huge rehearsal on April 15th when we all get together (about 200 of us) and make sure that everyone is up to speed and ready to teach. It's an exhausting day, as you can imagine!

It's not only important to get everyone together for the creative resources, but also to go through any important safety guidelines. There are CRBs to check, risk assessments to do, training in child protection procedures and all the other vitally important apparatus which has to come first. After all, we are looking after the most important people in parents' lives and we take that responsibility very seriously. There's always room for improvement.

Next Sunday, we'll be rehearsing ?The Coconut Calypso? ? so I thought you might like a little peek of what your children will be learning next term - click the image below to view.

Happy Easter everyone x