Picture Book Theater
Since 2007, I've been teaching a class that melds together concepts of theater with creative drama, where the children get to rehearse and perform a play straight out of a picture book in one hour total. They sometimes make props, sing songs, but there's always a 5-10 minute show 50 minutes into the hour that the parents can see. I've done this as a weekly class at Eileen Bowvers Performing Arts Workshop at Apple Tree Theater, at Actor's Workshop, Elmhurst Children's Theater, at Mamaroneck Library, and at Wellesley Free Library. I've used these techniques is schools and theaters all over Los Angeles and Chicago. I had the local paper wrote up the class at Mamaroneck Library: Bringing Children's Literature to Life at the Library.
Sometimes there is one roll for each kid. Sometimes the kids all play the same character. Sometimes the book is really conceptual, and the words just get staged. The kids who show up tend to be K-4, and I've seen kids going from refusing to talk on the first day to wanting the lead roll a year later. Sometimes I read all the words in a book, and sometimes I just tell the story. Sometimes I play characters in the story. Sometimes I feed them each line as they go. Sometimes they memorize all the lines. I rarely plan out anything before I get into the room. I bring a few books, see how many/what kids showed up, and I go from there, first reading them the book, then getting them on their feet and making it happen.
Here is a smattering of the books that I've brought to life.
Sometimes there is one roll for each kid. Sometimes the kids all play the same character. Sometimes the book is really conceptual, and the words just get staged. The kids who show up tend to be K-4, and I've seen kids going from refusing to talk on the first day to wanting the lead roll a year later. Sometimes I read all the words in a book, and sometimes I just tell the story. Sometimes I play characters in the story. Sometimes I feed them each line as they go. Sometimes they memorize all the lines. I rarely plan out anything before I get into the room. I bring a few books, see how many/what kids showed up, and I go from there, first reading them the book, then getting them on their feet and making it happen.
Here is a smattering of the books that I've brought to life.
This is a really conceptual book. I wish I wrote down exactly what I did, but I'm sure I can come up with something equally good or better next time. I know that one girl played the cake. And the girl playing the bird did "despondent" really well. That was awesome.
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Both of these books work best when teams of kids or individual kids read each element of the list while the other kids act it out. I've done 17 Things by putting all the kids in chairs facing the audience, and having them step up and do the thing when it's their turn. I've done 11 Experiments with teams of 2 kids hitting spike tape on their turn to talk, with all the other kids acting out the numbered elements in a creative drama style mush. I've fed lines for 17 and typed out 11. Either would work for either.
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I used props for the videos, action figures, crafts, and fort at the beginning, but other than paper swords, no costumes. 6 characters.
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All the children played Anna Hibiscus, and I played all the other characters (except for the mother, played by the big people in the audience.) I wrote a simple tune to the song that I played on ukulele that they all sang at the end. Have them list things that would make Anna happy in the counting scene.
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Behind the monster baby, I had a giant table with a queen sized sheet over it. As the baby opened her mouth, the child would slip under the sheet and be "eaten." This allowed them to come out one by one as they were burped out at the end. Between the bunny and Dr. Fox, I added a whole bunch of kids playing animals who had other ideas on how to soothe the baby. Let the kids choose their own animals. The tasks included a rattle, swaddling, teething (this was a piranha), a binky, soothing sleep noises from a rain stick, lullaby singing, rocking, reading a story, and getting the baby to laugh. Each time, the mother or father deer would pick up the phone and say "Our baby won't stop crying!" to which the other animal would use the reply from the book, and rush over with the object, give the parents an excuse to run out of the room, find a reason to lean in to look closer at the baby, and get eaten.
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Great show for 5 young kids to do. I play the mother and the shopkeeper, and they play the others. Basically the blocking is of them walking in a circle until they find the next character at the front of the stage.
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This can be done either as a creative drama or a play. Have all the kids design eyeless paper plate masks that they can hold up, and fill the box with those. At the end, all of them can dance around with the mask they made on.
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The show has 10 characters, but I had about 7 more kids come up with things they could be insulted for and come backs they could give, and I had them go after the two representative kids. Everyone was at the dance party at the carnival.
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The kids play the bunnies and Mike. There can be endless numbers of bunnies, since that's what the kids want to be anyhow.
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I did it with a group of 3, but more than one kid can play Boot, Shoe, and the Squirrel if you have more kids. This is a really good choice when you have physically active but vocally reluctant actors. Make sure the squirrel gets to come back at the end and do something funny.
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This is done as a straight creative drama, with all the kids playing the boy. Beforehand they draw a bunch of cats on a giant piece of butcher paper, which gets ripped up at the end when the cats come to life.
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Cast either the smallest or the largest child as the dinosaur. Have the signs, the shoes, etc all drawn on pieces of paper, and have kids be in charge of bringing them forward and showing them to the audience.
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Straight adaptation, with each kid playing a different roll and having the lines fed to them. Double up on chicken rolls, if you need. It can be done with no parents, just three girls, a farmer, and a bunch of chickens. Staple feathers to yarn and tie around heads for chicken costumes, and scatter feathers on one side of stage where the farm is. Use shaker eggs or plastic easter eggs for eggs, and have the farmer gather one from each chicken before Henrietta arrives at farm. End with Chicken Dance, and then they all lay one more egg. Read final sentence after music ends.
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All Kevin Henkes mouse books work well either staged or as a creative drama. This is my favorite for staging. You can always add extra kids to the class.
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I've done this as both a creative drama where everyone plays Marcie or as a staged play where everyone plays the characters. I really like seeing a kid take on Mr. Hammer as a character, though, especially his last line.
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I nabbed a bunch of keyboards from computers people weren't using at that moment so that they could click clack, and I printed out the notes in courier and left a note under each keyboard to look like it was being typed. I had 5 cows, 5 hens, a farmer, a duck, a donkey, and a pig. I used Lenny Anderson's Old MacDonald for the beginning, The Typewriter for the typing, and Plink, Plank, Plunk! for the diving board scene. (I used a flattened cardboard box for the board.) I also grabbed the Westin Woods video and put it in the projector for a "set." The start of the show had gathering of milk and eggs. Then I read the first few pages of Duck for President, to show farm life. I then read the funny page from Click Clack Surprise about cancelled party ideas, to give more kids a chance to shine. Then I started this book. Letters to Print Out
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Kids who aren't the crocodile tend to be able to to memorize their lines. Extra kids can double up on animals, though one Donkey and one Crocodile work best. I made a jet-pack out of 2 1-liter bottles full of yellow and red crepe paper (red trailing out at the end) and I electric taped it to the crocodile's shirt, and gave him science goggles to look like the illustration. For swinging through the trees I had the orangutans hold vines above their heads. These are the additional stanzas I wrote for a bigger cast.
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I do this as a creative drama where everyone plays Duck. It's very touching watching them deal with imaginary Ducklings and pretending to fly. I also love the moment where they lie on their backs and imagine flying. Gator works as well. See this sequel that some K aged drama students of mine "wrote."
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This one leads really well into eating cookies at the end of the play. Make sure Edwina gets a purse. It helps the comedy. Use a giant piece of butcher paper for the charts in the report, and then kids can smash through that as the wall.
Prop heavy show. Store all the backup foods under a table with a tablecloth. Draw fangs below lower lip with wash off marker. Great for November show.
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Creative drama where they all play the frog, though they can split off to be otters and birds at the beginning if you want. They come up with a list of wonderful and scary things that could happen in the middle of the book, and act them out.
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Write out the text of the letter, and make them act it out without narration, using the letter to determine what pantomime happens next.
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Cast each kid as an animal. They all can memorize the chant. You don't need every animal in the book, and you can add some if the kids are being picky. The water should be a blue sheet that rises up, and I added a simple song based on the chant before the curtain call.
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The kids start out all being parts of the wallpaper at the back of the room. The main animals are all masked kids, and the rest of the kids can be given puppets. (Pool noodle nose for Elephant.) The group of kids can also play the crocodiles in the pool. At the end, the kids go back into the wallpaper other than the Tiger and Emma.
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The original book only has a cast of 7 if you don't double up, so I added 5 more verses. You can also have multiple kids be the same animal, if you've got even more kids, a shorter time frame, or shyness.
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I had a kid, a sister, two parents, an exterminator, and a barbarian horde. I used a mouse puppet, a fist full of plastic flies, and a giant inflatable ant. I had two beanbag chairs and a bunch of squares of tissue paper and empty water bottles as trash. I used washable markers for the facial hair and makeup and silver plastic bowls tied to the kids heads as their barbarian helmets. The songs were a random sea shanty for the end (with a rain stick for the water) and "Marion the Barbarian Librarian" by Ratboy Jr. for the introduction of the barbarians. I had them speak in bar bar bar. The improvised phone call to the exterminator was amazing.
I let kids choose if they were town people or dogs. Balls were some of the few actual props. All the puppies had thin foam "tails" taped to the top of their pants because wagging is so important to the story.
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I double cast a lot of kids as some of the smaller animal parts, but with single casting, this book has over 20 characters. Most of the lines go to the chimp and the gorilla, but a lot of the gorilla's lines can be given to the other animals they meet along the way. For the birds, I had kids out with bird and bug puppets, and they sang the first verse of "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing" from the Tiki Room. Each suggestion was rejected by "Jim" with the same wording as the first page of rejections. When the porcupine suggests dancing, I let Jim do his fit and leave the stage, and then they all had a big dance party to Parry Gripp's Dance, Porcupine, Dance. I made sure that Norman and the porcupine danced back to back. As for the quills, we clipped probably 100 spring action clothes pins to her, and we had about 7 pinned to Norman's bottom before the final scene. At the end, they sang the first verse of Music for Aardvarks' Grumpy before bowing. We used pool noodles for elephant trunks and peacock plumage and a bunch of plastic bananas decorated the set.
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This is done as a straight adaptation. Can be done with fewer kids having the lesser ducks also play crocodiles. Use large crumpled up pieces of paper as the "rocks" so they actually can be dropped on the kids, and a line of chairs as the bridge.
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I used a giant yellow circle and a red pool noodle for the costume, random costumes for the other kids, and the cats had cat ears and were in a garbage bag with broom arms and a plastic pumpkin head. I had the extra kids being the adults that handed out candy (foam pieces). I played Halloween music during the trick-or-treat scene.
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This is a creative drama that I've probably done over 100 times. I first train kids how to use their magic crayons (they get to choose the color), and then we set out on the adventure. They choose the fruit on the tree, the scary thing in front of the tree, the style of boat, the food at the picnic (and they get to share the picnic food they create), and the animals who eat the picnic. They have to remember that we first drew the moon so they can find the moon and draw the window at the end. I also do the sequels.
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This is a large cast show with a lot of action and very few lines. I used an annoying version of wheels on the bus as they migrated as a way to make Bruce crankier. I used a large piece of cardboard with a big bite out of it to be the table. I used pool noodles and had all the minor characters come in as elephants at the end. The porcupine was covered in clothes pins. I used a large table as the bed so the turtles could be under it and all the kids fit on it. You could have as many as 25+ kids in this show, if you add lines for the possums having a pillow fight. You need at least 18.
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This works for 4-10 kids, with 1-7 baby crocodiles splitting the part. They walked in a pushup position to be crocodiles and all had their own names. I used a pool noodle for the sausage, giant ice cream cones instead of cake, and a bunch of plastic bananas. The child had a fishing poll and hat and was down right the whole time, ignoring the play until the babies approached her. She pushed them into the river instead of throwing them. They all danced to the Solange Knowles Baby Jamz Apples and Bananas at the end.
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This is best as a play version, except when all the different sorts of pups mentioned list. Then all the kids show all the sorts of dogs. Use upside down tables for cages.
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I cast a child as the guinea pig, and I always cast the quietest girl in the room as Lili. It makes the story better if you do.
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I gave Maurice a backpack with all the treats and knife and fork and all the things he'd need for the story. The mom and dad stayed on the side of the stage the whole story so the notes home could be said directly to them. The meat feast was a bunch of ridiculous stuffed animals. I let them wack at each other with pool noodles for the rampaging lesson. I had a preschooler play the puppy.
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This works well staged and as a creative drama. I scattered a bunch of plastic onions on the stage and fake ice cubs on the stage as a surprise when they got to the diamonds.
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Make a giant butcher paper princess, and let them color her in. Then use two kids to puppeteer the princess, and the rest of the kids to play the other roles.
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I put all the kids in penguin masks (paper ones), and the kid who played the zookeeper and the little girl were penguins when they weren't in the show. I had a bunch of die-cut fish in a bucket for feeding, one each, and they were put back in the bucket after they pretended to eat it, that the zookeeper used at the beginning, and when discovering the camera. I used "The Penguin Song" (Did you ever see, a penguin come to tea...) as the penguin games at the start. I took pictures of the illustrations from the start for the set (off the ipad onto the smart wall) and then I took pictures of the kids as random animals and as the penguins before the show, so I could show them at the end as the pictures. Then the camera was a camera shaped object that they pretended to use as penguins.
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I read this book, but we do it as a creative drama called the turquoise piano bench. Teenagers who live above a music shop have their iPhones taken as punishment during the spring break that all their friends are away. Notes on the piano bench found in the basement when trying to find the nabbed phone tell them to do childhood things that the actors themselves love doing now.
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I've done this using my masks, no props, and with a giant bundle of pool noodles. I've done it as a creative drama with everyone as the fish or as a staged drama with the kids playing each roll (and 2 or 4 kids playing the Octopus for the leg number.) You can even use this song. This is a really versatile book for adaptation.
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This show has 8 characters, but there can be a cat and dog and all the palace nannies/vallets added as well. I used a flat book cart covered in raffia for the cart, and I grabbed actual copies of the books reference and had the actors direct address the audience while showing them the book. The pig wore a mask and ran around creating chaos, and the pages that showed the princess and the pig living different lives I did one after the other instead of reading downward on the page and had the palace on one side and the farmer's family on the other.
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This was pretty much a straight show (mostly using masks instead of full PJs), other than I cast a girl to be the gorilla at the end. I considered using youtube videos, but I went with an actress (if more kids had shown up, I had enough black masks for more.) I used the song "Red Banana" by Ralph's World for the gorilla dance, and I had slides on my projection wall of the pictures of the gorillas she looked at in the pivotal moment.
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I gave them all cheap or fake instruments. We had more animals playing more instruments than the band does here, so I redistributed the lines using post-its during "rehearsal." One time I did it, I had a band of like 20 kids, all with different instruments. The van was chairs. We had security horses hand stamping audience members to let them into the show. Pig's "fans" were audience members. We used recorded rock versions of wheels on the bus and and Old MacDonald, though the bad playing and loud singing made them hard to hear.
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You can have more than one characters taking foxy and captain's lines and countless lemmings. Just name them the same three things over and over. We had magnetic fishing poles and foam fish with paper clips for the fishermen, giant recycling buckets the kids could get into feet first and then be tipped up and back down, taped in a circle pool noodles to be live saving rings, a laundry line full of white paper flags, and the inside of the slip cover of the book looks like the book they're reading.
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I had Shakespeare (or Stegasauruspeare) sit off to the side with a feather pen (and a copy of the book) the whole time and interject, saying things like "that's not what wherefore means!" or in response to the bad poetry comment, "I wrote that!" The character also can do some of the narration. I also added a "Thus with an asteroid, we die!" to finish the play before she fell into the tar pit. The tar pit was a bunch of black trash bags not opened up. I added more herbivores, I added a Benvolioadon to break up Mercutio's part, and we let all the kids who weren't major roles be at the masked ball in mask. I used the dance remix of Laurie Berkner's We Are the Dinosaurs and Whitla's Dinosaur Rock Opera for the party music. They played with a dinosaur wooden puzzle in the bedroom scene.
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I used foam black Zoro masks for the raccoons, and there are a lot of bits of narrative that can be said by Ralph, who has almost no lines in the book. The background photos easily came out of the book. I had Ralph reading a library copy of "The Terrible Two" during break, so the library book was the only thing in his loot sack. The stink bombs were evaluated one by one by the teacher, who commented on what they smelled like. The raccoons in the class had some improvised lines about stealing things from each other when the loot bags were announced. The kitten in the tree was a puppet, and the tree was a pool noodle. I didn't use any music in this one.
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This has a very flexible cast, since the number of people who are at a circus is unlimited. Other than the mermaid, the seagull, and the villain, all the kids had sea creature puppets or blow up creatures in the first scene. The seagull wasn't a circus creature, though I suppose he could have done it if he'd needed to. The mermaid was in a glittered up pillowcase cut at the bottom, and used a Bilibo to be dragged around, and a giant plastic container for a tank, though if I did it again I'd probably use a frame for the tank so she never had to get out of the Bilibo. This is a chance to teach kids how to juggle scarves and jump through hoops and do basic clowning, if you have the time. The mermaid just sang those ascending scales from Disney's Little Mermaid, the tune she sings right before she gives up her voice. We used the projection of images from the book for the whole set, both the ocean and the circus trailers.
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I cast kids as all the trucks on the inside cover of smash crash. Then we did all three as different acts. The Pete's Party had all the trucks other than Pete standing in a straight line following the directions while Pete held up the signs. Uh-oh Max got stuck under a chair. Smash Crash, a beach ball on a string is the wrecking ball, cups stacked up were the cones, and izzy wore an ice cream hat. The main trucks had construction hats with eyeballs on them.
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This is another conceptual book. I had the kids sit in a line of chairs facing the audience. I would read the beginning of the sentence to the audience, all the kids would say "is scary," and one at a time, along the line, by themselves or in pairs they acted out the statement. This is the book's text
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Creative Drama with everyone as Nib, though you can let the girls be Lola once she joins the story. The best part is when they're going through the tunnels, have them stop crawling and go flat on the floor when you make a train rumble noise with your hands on the table. Drama game integration!
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This is done as a creative drama, and best when you can turn off the lights yourself. The scene where he gets taken by the Taily-po, let most of the kids be the monster, coming at him from all sides like in that game where the keys are under the chair and the kids try to reach them without the person on the chair pointing at them. Play that game to get the action right. This drama can be very scary. Good for Halloween week.
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Stanley can be a stuffed toy or an actor. If a stuffed toy, it's fun to have a different pink Stanley from the other Stanley. Make the giant sign and the final letter beforehand. You can either make more or fewer toys. I read the story, rather than feeding the lines to Wonderdoll, even though she's the one telling the story.
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Make sure someone plays the butterfly using a puppet. It's much more fun watching a kid try to follow around the other actress than let her do all the work. When it comes time to give ideas as to how to get the butterfly off her, let kids come up with their own ideas. Use Butterfly Rap when she's reading about the butterflies. Have a bunch of kids take part in it, and get some beat boxing going, too.
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I made die cut masks with beaks on them for the birds, all looking different, but not scientifically accurate, since each would play many birds. (The pink headed duck got two masks, so she could be other birds before her starring moment.) I had each bird kid get called in a different location, adding a few birds to the ones in the book at the start. Then all the birds were the dead stuffed birds in the evil man's lounge, as well as the birds that came when Agnes was trying to reach the duck, and finally they attacked the bad guys. I gave Pittsnap two henchpeople, which helped with the net work, as well as gave someone a chance to spell out his plan to follow the women and steal the duck. I added dialogue to the boat/train/yak scene. "Oh look, a seagull!" "Oh look, a train-gull!" and "Yaks aren't birds."
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This works with just three kids or as many as ten, whether kids play more than one part or not. There's never more than 3 characters on stage at once, usually just two. It's a deceptively simple book, since there's a lot of hidden science in a preschool friendly narrative. Use lengths of yarn and slipnots to represent the first tail, and a knotted yarn around the waist hidden in a pocket for the final tail.
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Creative Drama based. They make paper plate masks before we start. When they have them on, they are wild things. When not, they are Max. They live on the sides of the room until they reach the island, and then they choose which they want to be until Max has to go. The game "Yes, Let's!" is incorporated to the beginning of being bad. And either it repeats itself during the wild rumpus or I turn on some great drumming music and they dance. I surprise them with a spray bottle to the face when their eyes are closed on the boats, feeling the water in their face.
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As the creative drama, all of the actors play Willow and I'm the teacher until she leaves the present. Then they all play the teacher until the end of winter break. Then they're all Willow and I'm the teacher. They pre-draw her odd colored drawings.
As the play, it's pretty straight forward. The kids playing normal classmates have to pre-draw their normal drawings. |
This play either needs 2 hours or 2 sessions. It's a 22 minute book when read out loud. You can do different protagonists different weeks in a row. Very word heavy for the kid actors, but very rewarding and very funny. A bunch of wolf heads/masks for the kids when they run in during the wolves coming out of the wall scene is wonderful.
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I had a selection of hats so that random characters could wear hats. I turned some of the first person narration into narrative for me, and I gave some of the lines to the other characters. At the final party, everyone was wearing a hat. (my hat based songs were Hat Like That by Stephen Courtney and Everbody Hat Hat from Ear Snacks: the Album
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