Summer camp - pot pourri - May 7 to May 18th, 2012
It was finally time for the show, and they were all very very excited...!!
Then the inevitable happened. Right after the title scene, the girls were geared up to move to the opening scene, when the entire setup (screen with all the scene backgrounds) came toppling down !! It was so hilarious and a mistake that they had not foreseen, that all the girls just burst out laughing, and we set it back up in a jiffy, and the rest of the play went smoothly....after that blunder, everything else seemed so trivial !!! :D
Here are the 2 stories that were charted out ..
"The Hypnotising mirror"
Sneha and Ishitha are good friends. They have a pet bird Methi. Sneha moves into a new house and discovers a box in the attic...in which she finds a mirror. The mirror (Reflectia) hypnotises anyone that sees it and makes them evil. Sneha, now under the spell of the mirror is evil and she is rude with her friends. Reflectia uses her to steal things from a shop and to enslave rats to do all its work ! Ishitha and Methi notice that it is Reflectia that is making Sneha evil and decide to help her. But how do they get to Reflectia without getting hynotised themselves...and finally come up with the idea that they would use another mirror and Reflectia would hypnotise itself, and then Sneha can be freed. They go to Sneha's house with a mirror, and their plan succeeds, and Methi flies away with Reflectia and drops it into a volcano ! Sneha, the shopkeeper, and the rats break our out of their spell, and now every lives happily ever after !!!
"Tin and Tat" (story made by the 6 year olds)
Tin is a mouse and Tat is a monkey. they hate each other. One day they go to the market, and start throwing vegetables at each other. The shopkeepers are angry and chase them out. Now both Tin and Tat are scared and they hold hands and run away !
It was a great summer camp this year ..It was a fantastic 2 weeks of creativity, planning, organising, and implementing from all the girls in the group. Everyone one was bursting with ideas, but more importantly they learnt to listen , and to know that it was important that they work as a team, and that they alone cannot take care of every aspect of the play !
It was proof that children when given a free hand and ample time have the attitude to take charge of things and acheive their goals !
Our summer camp took off on May7th, the concept was pot pourri...aimed at getting children to come up with their own story, make a story board , make music for the story and to enact out the story using puppets.
We had 6 children (all girls) registered for the camp, and the original idea was to make 2 teams and let them compete with each other.
The first 2 days the children played games that helped them make a story. We gave the children a bunch of picture cards, and asked them to come up with a story using all the picture cards that they had. They had 20 minutes to come up with the story and then to read it out to the group.
We had 6 children (all girls) registered for the camp, and the original idea was to make 2 teams and let them compete with each other.
The first 2 days the children played games that helped them make a story. We gave the children a bunch of picture cards, and asked them to come up with a story using all the picture cards that they had. They had 20 minutes to come up with the story and then to read it out to the group.
By day three they were waiting to kick start their story, and the real ice breaker was a game of dumb charades. The group worked well together, and they came up with the idea that they would make just one story working as a single group. That was the first indication that the girls were ready to take charge of things.
Day 4 saw the older girls finalise their story, and identify the scenes.
They had the characters defined, and decided how their story was to flow. They charted out each scene and indicated what each scene was to have in their own codewords....(which they later figured was so hard to comprehend !! :) )
Each scene was finalised, and they ended day 4 with the girls themselves enacting the story out.
They had the characters defined, and decided how their story was to flow. They charted out each scene and indicated what each scene was to have in their own codewords....(which they later figured was so hard to comprehend !! :) )
Each scene was finalised, and they ended day 4 with the girls themselves enacting the story out.
On day 5 , they told me they wanted to perform live to their parents ! (the original idea was that we would make a recording of it). Then they divided the work amongst themselves, a couple of them working on sketching out the scenes on chart papers, 2 of the younger children working with me on the puppets, one of them on the dialogues and one on the music. Each one was testing their idea, showing it to me or to their pals for feedback, checking if there were on track, and then proceeding to finalise the dialogue/ music / background !
It was amazing to see 6 - 13 year old organising themselves so well, thinking about the objective and fine tuning their approach with feedback !!
We had a couple of days break (sat/ Sun) after day 5,and on day 6 (Monday), the girls came rushing in waiting to get back to their chores !!! It was then that I brought it to their notice that they did not have a title for the play yet ...and within 5 minutes we had about 15 names on the white board !! Spoilt for choice now !!
We finally settled on the "The Hypnotising Mirror" !
By Day 8, we had all the scenes ready, dialogues done, and music near complete. the puppets were almost done, with just the balloons to be done on the last day...!
Day 9 was our first rehearsal .... and we figured a few things ...such as holding out the hand puppets hurt their hands :) ; they were not sure which puppets to show for which scene; the girls delivering the dialogue did not know what the cue was for them to start; the girl on the keyboard was unsure when to start and stop the music...and so on....but also more importantly that they were all getting so pressurised with trying to get everything done perfectly that they were in fact snapping at each other now !!
The final day began half an hour earlier, and the first thing we did was to let the girls know that they need not panic if they made a mistake ...the audience would know it's a mistake only when they panicked ! More importantly that this should be fun and not something they should get so worked up about !
We did 3 rehearsals, and by then they had all sorted out all the issues - knowing which puppets to pick, who was to change the scenes, the cue for the dialogues, and for the music ...!
It was amazing to see 6 - 13 year old organising themselves so well, thinking about the objective and fine tuning their approach with feedback !!
We had a couple of days break (sat/ Sun) after day 5,and on day 6 (Monday), the girls came rushing in waiting to get back to their chores !!! It was then that I brought it to their notice that they did not have a title for the play yet ...and within 5 minutes we had about 15 names on the white board !! Spoilt for choice now !!
We finally settled on the "The Hypnotising Mirror" !
By Day 8, we had all the scenes ready, dialogues done, and music near complete. the puppets were almost done, with just the balloons to be done on the last day...!
Day 9 was our first rehearsal .... and we figured a few things ...such as holding out the hand puppets hurt their hands :) ; they were not sure which puppets to show for which scene; the girls delivering the dialogue did not know what the cue was for them to start; the girl on the keyboard was unsure when to start and stop the music...and so on....but also more importantly that they were all getting so pressurised with trying to get everything done perfectly that they were in fact snapping at each other now !!
The final day began half an hour earlier, and the first thing we did was to let the girls know that they need not panic if they made a mistake ...the audience would know it's a mistake only when they panicked ! More importantly that this should be fun and not something they should get so worked up about !
We did 3 rehearsals, and by then they had all sorted out all the issues - knowing which puppets to pick, who was to change the scenes, the cue for the dialogues, and for the music ...!
It was finally time for the show, and they were all very very excited...!!
Then the inevitable happened. Right after the title scene, the girls were geared up to move to the opening scene, when the entire setup (screen with all the scene backgrounds) came toppling down !! It was so hilarious and a mistake that they had not foreseen, that all the girls just burst out laughing, and we set it back up in a jiffy, and the rest of the play went smoothly....after that blunder, everything else seemed so trivial !!! :D
Here are the 2 stories that were charted out ..
Sneha and Ishitha are good friends. They have a pet bird Methi. Sneha moves into a new house and discovers a box in the attic...in which she finds a mirror. The mirror (Reflectia) hypnotises anyone that sees it and makes them evil. Sneha, now under the spell of the mirror is evil and she is rude with her friends. Reflectia uses her to steal things from a shop and to enslave rats to do all its work ! Ishitha and Methi notice that it is Reflectia that is making Sneha evil and decide to help her. But how do they get to Reflectia without getting hynotised themselves...and finally come up with the idea that they would use another mirror and Reflectia would hypnotise itself, and then Sneha can be freed. They go to Sneha's house with a mirror, and their plan succeeds, and Methi flies away with Reflectia and drops it into a volcano ! Sneha, the shopkeeper, and the rats break our out of their spell, and now every lives happily ever after !!!
"Tin and Tat" (story made by the 6 year olds)
Tin is a mouse and Tat is a monkey. they hate each other. One day they go to the market, and start throwing vegetables at each other. The shopkeepers are angry and chase them out. Now both Tin and Tat are scared and they hold hands and run away ! It was a great summer camp this year ..It was a fantastic 2 weeks of creativity, planning, organising, and implementing from all the girls in the group. Everyone one was bursting with ideas, but more importantly they learnt to listen , and to know that it was important that they work as a team, and that they alone cannot take care of every aspect of the play !
It was proof that children when given a free hand and ample time have the attitude to take charge of things and acheive their goals !
