The Barnyard Actors Develop Their Characters

This morning I had the privilege of watching the neighbor kids.  When I was asked I knew instantly that it would be the perfect time to finish up our Barnyard Boogie lessons.  

We started our lesson by standing in place, relaxing our bodies then starting our vocal warm ups.

With the letter sounds for A and S we used our voices to follow the vocalizing lines.

How would you use your voice to interpret these lines?

We used our letter sounds to change the tone of our voice 

then we used the letter sounds in a dramatic way.  

I got this idea from LeapFrog Letter factory.

How does the A sound when a monster walks into the room?

We scream AAAAAAAAAA!

side note:

This is an awesome phonics program because they teach the letters in a creative way giving wonderful examples of how the sounds can be acted out.  A perfect arts-integrated lesson for pre-school and Kindergarten!

When I bought our DVD if came with matching flashcards and they have been my favorites to use with the girls.  I have not seen them sold separately but Running With Scissors has these printables for free!

We then used a new tongue twister to continue our work with S sounds.

"A skunk sat on a stump

the skunk thought the stump stunk

the stump thought the skunk stunk"

Next we used the song Old McDonald to do a song interpretation. 

I would sing the first part "Old McDonald had a farm"

They would sing, "E I E I O"

They would mimic my tone into their part.

Quite, Loud, Sharp, Slow, Mean, Loving, Shy...ect.

After this we played a new version to musical chairs.

I made some animal flashcards for this exercise.

We started by identifying each animal and then acted out how each of them would move and sound.

We then put the animal cards in different hula hoops and had the kids move around the room to music ( we used the techno version of Old McDonald )

When the music stopped everyone had to jump into a cage, stall or yard and act our the animal that was on their card.

Next up we had story time with "The Little Red Hen"

When we were done we took a deeper looked into the characters of this book.

As actors we get the opportunity to make them jump of the page and come to life but first we have to decide what it is that will separate them from everyone else. 

Remember,

There are no small parts, only small actors.

As an illustration to this point we made a bubble map.

This was our first attempts as a group but I wanted them to bring their own ideas to the character.

So we took turns as different rolls as we acted out "The Little Red Hen".

Here is the Hen asking the Cat, Dog and Duck if they will help plant the seed, but they are too lazy.

"Who will help me eat the bread?"

"No you wont!"