Second Session, Tuesday 6th March- 10am-1pm, 3 hours
There were a few new faces within the group, but mainly the same children. One of the new members did have more noticeable behavioural issues than other members, and always seemed to want to be the leader, and break the rules during games.
The first exercise of this session was 'chairs' a simple focus exercise in which everyone apart from one member sits on a chair in a space in the room, and the person standing up must try and reach the chair, whilst the people sitting must swap places to make it harder for the person.
After this we played some simple but fun name games as there were new faces everyone needed reminding of names. These are usually fast paced and snappy games to get everyone thinking.
'Contracts' was our next exercise. In this everyone picks a person from the circle, and the aim of the game is to be sitting next to the person you picked by exchanging 'contracts' with people and asking to swap seats, this is a fun game especially if you have chosen the same person as some one else. We tried it several different ways including not being able to speak to ask people.
The next game we played in this session was one called 'Anybody who' or what I like to call it 'The sun shines on' which is where somebody stands in the middle and says a statement like 'Anybody who likes dogs' and then everyone swaps seats if this applies to them and so on. This is a simple game in theory but many of the youngsters really wanted to be in the middle, so they were pretending to walk slowly or not see the spare seats.
Our last exercise like this before the break and the start of the main exercise was one where imaginary items get passed from the circle person to person, for example ' Red Ball David', then David would say ' Red Ball, thank you' and pass it on. The idea of this game is to focus and allow many items to be introduced and passed around at the same time and see how many get 'lost' or forgotten about at the end of the exercise. By the end a lot of the items which had been introduced had been lost, or had several children claiming they had been passed the item last.
The main exercise for this session was playing with the ideas of mime, mirrors and music. In pairs the youngsters worked out a simple movement piece with on person mirroring the others movements, so closely that you could not tell who was leading and who was following. They then expanded this exercise using 16 beats of a piece of music to work out a routine about someone getting ready in the mornings, whilst still mirroring one another. They repeated this several times, some in slow motion as well, and they all did it as a group and it looked really effective. I partnered on boy as one of the others was very nervous and chose to sit out. They ended up with a short well rehearsed routine, and at the end they walked out of the routine into a frozen position and took on a character, then shared the characters with us.
Third Session, Tuesday 20th March- 10am-1pm, 3 hours
This session started off with a fun warm up rhyme which I have since used with another group I work with which I will explain about in a later blog. The rhyme went:
'Hi my names Joe and I work in a button factory, I've got a wife and two kids, and one day my boss came up to me, he said Joe, are you busy? I said no, he said will you press this button with your right hand'
The rhyme goes on pressing 'the button' with a different body part until you are jumping around madly. Its a fun exercise to get everyone warmed up. Our next exercise was similar to the animal kingdom game we played in the first session, but we used the idea of King and Queen being top of the 'food chain'. Before the break they were allowed to choose a few games to play, one popular one was Grandmothers Footsteps which is similar to Whats the time Mister wolf.
After this for the main exercise David set out a selection of props on the floor, props actually is a shortened term for the word property, meaning in theatre terms, and objects or items used on stage. The props for today included a steering wheel, some plates and goblets, a toy fish, a ships wheel. Each child was very eager to get their hands on their ideal prop. David explained that in pairs or on their own they would be able to pick a prop and they would then have to work on create a story for the prop, writing down all their ideas, and then turning these into frozen images to represent their story. After a few minor squabbles about who was going to have what item they all got going. I worked closely with two of the younger boys who had some great ideas but were struggling a bit to write them all down so I did the writing and they went over it. At the end of the session they shared their ideas, and did a small show back of the stories and freeze frames they had come up with.
Overall even though I was only able to do three sessions with this group they have been one of my favourites to work with as its really fun, and great to see all their ideas, and also have a lot of involvement. This experience has taught me to be braver about getting involved in new challenges, and I would definitely do work with this group or children of this age in the future if this was possible.
'Hi my names Joe and I work in a button factory, I've got a wife and two kids, and one day my boss came up to me, he said Joe, are you busy? I said no, he said will you press this button with your right hand'
The rhyme goes on pressing 'the button' with a different body part until you are jumping around madly. Its a fun exercise to get everyone warmed up. Our next exercise was similar to the animal kingdom game we played in the first session, but we used the idea of King and Queen being top of the 'food chain'. Before the break they were allowed to choose a few games to play, one popular one was Grandmothers Footsteps which is similar to Whats the time Mister wolf.
After this for the main exercise David set out a selection of props on the floor, props actually is a shortened term for the word property, meaning in theatre terms, and objects or items used on stage. The props for today included a steering wheel, some plates and goblets, a toy fish, a ships wheel. Each child was very eager to get their hands on their ideal prop. David explained that in pairs or on their own they would be able to pick a prop and they would then have to work on create a story for the prop, writing down all their ideas, and then turning these into frozen images to represent their story. After a few minor squabbles about who was going to have what item they all got going. I worked closely with two of the younger boys who had some great ideas but were struggling a bit to write them all down so I did the writing and they went over it. At the end of the session they shared their ideas, and did a small show back of the stories and freeze frames they had come up with.
Overall even though I was only able to do three sessions with this group they have been one of my favourites to work with as its really fun, and great to see all their ideas, and also have a lot of involvement. This experience has taught me to be braver about getting involved in new challenges, and I would definitely do work with this group or children of this age in the future if this was possible.
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