Getting to know each other

It’s the start of our term and a new academic year. It’s lovely to see the children again after the long holiday and also to meet lots of new students too.

We always start each term with a communication topic so we play lots of games around the theme of Getting to know each other.

For the 4-7s, in our improvised adventure our character PF ends up sitting next to some children he doesn't know at the cinema and it makes him feel a bit nervous and uncomfortable. We role-play how to deal with this situation and play some ‘greeting games’ to demonstrate how much fun it is getting to know new people. Perfect for the first day of term when we have lots of new children joining our class.

Eye contact

Our topic of the week is Eye Contact, which is a massive focus for us at Perform and one that we work on a lot throughout our workshops.

We encourage the children to use eye contact when they are speaking to individuals and to groups of people too. But, it’s quite normal for children not to look at people they might not know very well and it’s something that parents often mention when their child first joins Perform.

We explore how to look at people when you talk to them and we play lots of fun games to highlight the importance of this to the children. As always, the important life skills we teach the children are delivered using games, fun and laughter.

Good posture

This week is a very physical and energised lesson based on the topic of why it’s important to have Good Posture.

We talk about how it’s important to walk with our shoulders back and our head held high as not only is it good for our body but it’s also good for our confidence too.

One of the ways children learn best is through actually acting out the topic so that they understand and empathise, rather than simply being told what to do. So, for our 4-7 year olds, PF goes on an improvised flying adventure with The Broomstick. When he sits on it with bad posture, The Broomstick flies really slowly. However, when he’s sitting up straight and holding his head high, The Broomstick goes really fast!
 

Vocal volume

It’s Vocal Volume week this week. If you’re a regular Perform parent then you’ll know that teaching vocal projection is very important to us.

We encourage the children to project their voices at all times as it’s such an important life skill. As well as having a loud voice, our clarity and diction must always be excellent and that means paying attention to consonants too.

We play a variety of games as we learn how to have a healthy, loud and well-projected voice. We play vocal tennis where we “throw” consonants at the children using either a quiet or loud voice and they have to respond by “throwing” them back to us in exactly the same way.

My opinion is...

Each term, we like to have one week where our focus is about Expressing Opinions and sharing them with the class. 

We ask the children to review their favourite toy and discuss why they love it. It’s so good to see the children express themselves analytically like this.

Using drama to become a different character (and therefore thinking as someone else) can really free up the analytical part of our brains, as when we’re ‘in character’ we can look at a situation from a different point of view and see it more rationally. 

Sharing

Our focus with the 4-7 year olds is about Sharing and we discuss what sharing means and how nice it is to share. We role-play how different it makes you feel when you share as opposed to when you don’t share.

Enunciation

A really fun week this week where we look at Enunciation.

Good enunciation is the act of speaking clearly and concisely. The opposite of good enunciation is mumbling and slurring which we definitely don’t advocate!

We spend a bit of time talking about the importance of enunciating properly when we speak. For example, imagine ordering ‘french fries’ in a restaurant and getting ‘french flies’ instead!

As well as trying different tongue twisters and vocal exercises, we also experiment by exaggerating our enunciation by really going over the top, over-pronouncing words and then bringing our speech back to a normal level. It’s an excellent way to wake up our mouths and faces!

You’ll no doubt have noticed that the very best actors and speech-makers have brilliant enunciation when they speak and that’s the type of thing we want to promote at Perform. Learning this skill from an early age is something a child can hold onto forever.

Being positive

Our focus this week is Being Positive and looking on the bright side of situations.

The 4-7 year olds play a game where they have to create a Positive Potion where everyone has to think of a positive/happy word to put into the imaginary magic cauldron. This helps expand vocabulary as the children offer and listen to each other's positive words and, of course, we make sure that they announce their words in a loud and clear voice.

All ages play a really fun solo-speaking game called “Unfortunately/Fortunately”, where, one at a time, they have to say something that’s not very good and then immediately think of a positive instead.
 

Thinking about other people's feelings

We’re now well underway into rehearsals for our end of term shows and we have lots of fun going through the scenes, blocking and remembering stage directions.

Our focus of the week is Thinking about other people’s feelings. We start off by establishing what we mean when we talking about feelings and then we act out different emotions, both verbally and physically, using mime, improvisation and role-play.

Vocal dynamics

We have fun this week with our topic Vocal Dynamics.

We do lots of work at Perform on vocal projection (we had a specific focus on this earlier in the term), and this week we look at how our voice can change depending on the situation we’re in. We experiment with quiet voices, medium voices and loud voices and do lots of vocal warm-ups and play some vocal games.

We also look at how different situations can affect your voice (e.g nerves) and how you can counteract this with breathing support.

Improvisation

Our special focus this week is Improvisation, where scenes, characters and stories are made up and invented in the moment. 

We do lots of improvisation at Perform and it is a regular weekly activity but, this week, we have a specific focus on it for the whole session.

One of the benefits of drama workshops is that you put the children into imaginary situations where they have to think quickly on their feet and problem-solve. It helps them practice creative thinking skills and is fantastic for their confidence.

The 4- 7 year olds will play a cross-section of exercises, including improvising making objects with their bodies in just 10 seconds, speaking for 15 seconds on their own and giving a reason for why they didn’t take the cookies from the cookie jar! Do ask your child to explain.
 

Standing up for yourself

Our topic this week is Standing up for yourself.

For the 4-7 year olds, in the improvised adventure Morgan Le Fay (King Arthur’s sister) tries to persuade PF to do something against his will and keeps on and on trying to make him do it. Suddenly, PF realises that she’s bullying him and he has to stand up for himself (stand tall, look her straight in the eye and have a confident voice) and tell her simply that he won’t do it. And it works. As soon as someone stands up to her she backs down and is sorry.

It's the week before the show

Next week is show week so we spend a significant amount of the class going through our show and getting excited about dressing up, singing and dancing and performing for our families.

Even though it’s a great part of our term’s work, the performance is not the most important part of what we do at Perform. However, it’s a fantastic way to bring together the skills that we focus on each week.

Our teachers take the children on a final run-through and get them to really work on their vocal projection in readiness for an audience, plus a reminder of where they stand in every scene.  So much to remember!

Fun week!

We have a blast this week and celebrate our term’s work by playing the children's favourite games. We give them a sneaky peek into next term’s theme which sees us heading off Around the World with Phileas Fogg.