[davidsensei]

I normally teach 20-30 kids with a homeroom teacher present (though I rarely use them), but in the afternoon I teach smaller group sessions. Your situation sounds more like my afternoon style. The first thing I would do is check out the room for any distractions. See if you can position things or people in such a way as to keep the distractions out of their line of sight. I almost always have the kids sit in a line of chairs, so if I know that people walking past the room will be a distraction, I place their backs to the window so that they can't see outside. If the bookshelf is too inviting, I'll place a table in front of it.

In general, I try to control the kids' energy levels by doing low-key activities followed by very active ones. I normally start with a hello song. If there are 10 kids, I usually use a song that keeps them in place, like B-I-N-G-O (but modifying the lyrics to be "Hello, hello, how are you... how are you todaaaay? H-A-P-P-Y..."). The way I do it has footstomps and handclaps to go along with generic hello song actions. My standard color warmup is to dump a bunch of colored objects (colored chips are best, but torn up pieces of colored paper work fine too - and tearing it up can be both interesting and functional if you have the kids repeat the color with each tear) on the other side of the room and have them run and get a designated color. I then present the main theme and do a fun activity (usually a game) to reinforce that. In general, I never do games at the board. I like to keep the kids active. They normally want to be moving about, so if they know that they get to do so as part of the class, they're more interested in what I have to say.