Bringing the story to life

Today was one of those days where we wanted to stay in our PJ's and watch too much TV.  But...

 The show must go on!

 So we pulled ourselves together and started off with an acting warm up

The copy cat game

The person standing in the hula hoop had to give an action and sound and then the people outside of the hula hoop had to mimic.

We then did some vocal exercises much like last week.

On a side note, I think theatre classes would be very beneficial for children struggling with speech and a very good program for them to transition into.  The majority of Estee's speech issues are worked on through repetition.  When she slows down and thinks about the word she is saying it comes out much clearer.

In February I decided to turn the girls bay window into a theatre.  I gave them bible verses to memorize and for fun we would pretend we were at the theatre and they had to say their verses loud and clear so that the whole audience could hear them.

This is still an activity they love playing.  They both happen to be really good at memorizing their monologues, but this just might be the right activity to get them excited about it.  One thing I have noticed is that Estee's speech is so much clearer when she is on her stage and giving her lines.  She has to slow down, think about her words and say them loud and clear.  This activity gives her a chance to practice while both completely engaging her imagination and building her self confidence as we cheer uncontrollably for a job well done.

OK back to our day

For our next exercise I brought our a mirror and our poster of emotions.

First, we practiced just making our faces express the emotions.
 Next, I gave them simple lines that went along with the emotion.

some examples

Happy
"Hi, how are you?"

Proud
"I just won first place."

Guilty
"It was me, I stole the cookie from the cookie jar"

Jealous
"I wanted to be the line leader today"

Coppelia really loved this game and liked to expand on her lines!

Lastly, we turned on the music to our theme "Peter and the Wolf" and we acted out the story with the story teller.

Estee - Duck & Coppelia - Bird

They argued
Bird:  What kind of a bird are you if you can't fly?
Duck:  What kind of a bird are you if you can't swim?

Coppelia - Grandfather

"It's a dangerous place.  If a wolf should come out of the forest, then what would you do?"

Coppelia - Grandfather & Estee - Peter

But Grandfather took Peter by the hand, led him home and locked the gate.


I wasn't able to get as many pictures as I would have liked, the girls cast me as the wolf  and trapped me with a lasso.

Then when we were done we had an after school snack.