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Well, I survived my second session of my "Let's Pretend" drama class for preschoolers. I definitely felt better about this session. And I certainly felt more prepared. But how prepared can you really be for a room full of preschoolers?
In this week's class, I wanted to focus on expressing emotions and conveying activities without using words.
I had a handful of envelopes, and I had each kid draw one from my hand.
Next, we moved on to how music made us feel and how we could express those feelings with our bodies.
One of the things I learned after my first session was to set up the "lessons" as games. If I just try to stand in front of the kids and explain activities, they are going to have little or no interest in it. But if the exercises seem more like play, the kids are more apt to be engaged.
Still, all in all, Session Two went much better than Session One. I was much better prepared, the kids latched onto the activities well, and it was a learning experience for everyone involved... especially me!
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Posted: 1/25/06 |
In each envelope was a simple picture of a face expressing some feeling: happy, sad, angry, confused, surprised, scared, silly, sleepy, etc. Once we had identified what feeling the face was expressing, we expressed that emotion ourselves using our faces and bodies.
I loaded up my Ipod with a bunch of songs: "Night on Bald Mountain," "The Hamster Dance," Enya's "Orinoco Flow," "The Sabre Dance," "Mahna Mahna," "The Ride of the Valkyries," and more.
I played the songs for the kids, and we danced around the room happy. And we danced around the room sad. And we danced angry. And we danced silly. And everytime the music stopped... everyone had to freeze!
Our final "game" was a version of "Charades." I had a hat with a bunch of little, folded-up pieces of paper in it. When each kid drew a piece out of the hat, they found a description of an activity on it: "walk a dog," "brush your teeth," "eat hot soup,"
"play basketball," and such. With my help, the kids silently acted out their actions and the other kids had to guess what they were pantomiming. It seemed to be very successful. The kids felt good when they guessed right, and the child doing the activity felt good when their activity was recognized.
I still feel that a 45-minute class is too long, and the kids' attention waned after 30 minutes. And, once again, my class of just girls was so much better than the class with boys in it. The boys are much more easily distracted and much less focused. The girls are eager to pay attention and play along.
