Newbie with several questions

Hello everyone, my name is John. My Poi interest started with a couple of my elementary students bugging me allowing Poi in our juggling and unicycle club. Our school club is in its 19th year and we are always looking for new and interesting skills. I created 5 juggling levels for our school but we follow IUF for unicycles. My 5 circus skills levels are based on creating a balanced all around circus skills performer. I started allowing Poi last year after a student passed level 4 for our juggling club. he kept bugging me about Poi so i told him that he had to pass level 4 and when he did i was thinking.."oh shoot, i do not know anything about Poi". He started with socks which seemed like a cool way to start for me since he created his own set and it was likely free. However, i wanted to provide our students with some real authentic Poi so i purchased 7 sets of LED, white ball, black string, double finger loop, with a swivel near the ball.

Here in America, there were several different prices on Amazon for very similar looking objects. I have had major issues with the Poi that i am using. The strings that insert into the white ball have popped out and now several of the Poi balls are needing some work to be usable. In order to get the strings reinserted into the ball, i had to cut out the LED kits. I am wondering if others have had these similar issues and how you fixed them? I thought that i could tie a knot on the inside that would keep the string from pulling through. Or even looping the string through both holes and tying it off outside of the Poi ball. After i figure out how to secure the strings, i imagine that i will super glue the LED kid back to the Poi ball. If i am totally wrong here, i just cut apart and ruined all of my Poi sets...but i had to do something since the strings were coming out.

The other issue that i am curious about is the swivels. when i was researching Poi, i was able to ask some high school kids next door to my school what they use. They mentioned they liked the swivels closer to their hands for hyperloops. I read on this site from itsdavidhudson about his preference, but i am still new and i know very little about Poi. I want to learn more about what would make the most sense for my elementary students. Now... i have some kids that really become hyper focused on certain aspects of the 2 clubs(juggling/unicycling)....and i want them to have the right equipment for a decent price. We have 60+ kids so purchasing equipment for both clubs becomes an issue. However, we are 19 years old so it takes me 3-5 years to build up our supplies and i want to do it right. We also sell equipment from Juggle Dream which helps raise funds, but it takes some work to raise funds. Wasting money really irritates me and i want to find a way to make the best out of poor situation.

-Would it be worth it to add swivels closer to my hands?
-Should i leave the swivels that are currently near the Poi balls and add swivels near my hands? Thus having 2 sets of swivels.
-Do i remove the swivels that are near the Poi balls and move them up near hands?
-Do the swivels resemble fishing swivels?

If you might have some ideas please offer your suggestions.

I bought the light up LED version because for our school and community shows, we have a couple different light up sections. We do ball, flowerstick, diabolos at the beginning all LED, and then a wicked triple bearing diabolo light up routine. I wanted to add Poi because i thought this would be an excellent lights on and lights off routine.

Thanks for your feedback. Take care,

John

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