Well, I'm back to report on another jam-packed weekend of Kids @ Citz!
It was great to see everyone again this week after having the holiday weekend off last week, even if I was a little rusty with remembering some names! We soon got into the swing of things though and all my classes produced some brilliant work this week which has filled me with a very sleepy contentedness (is that even a word?).
On Saturday, all 4 of my classes were exploring the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Each class managed to work as a team to tell the whole story, and I was amazed at how detailed they were able to be (telling parts of the story that I had completely forgotten about!). In the two Tiny Citizens classes we then did some story-acting where we saw some lovely interpretations of the characters, the beanstalk, the giant's castle etc. The Little Citizens, however, worked on creating a play of a shortened version of the story with each of three groups taking a section of the story to act (beginning, middle and end). Next week, all of these classes are going to be working on Sleeping Beauty, so we are very much looking forward to delving into that story and exploring all of its characters and castles, forests and fairies.
Sunday was a fab day, with all 3 of my classes working really hard and showing lots of enthusiasm and energy. Jo, our usual assistant, was off this week so we had Louise in with us instead and she led each of these classes in a real high-energy warm-up that had us creating all sorts of shapes and moving in all sorts of different ways! We played some games and did some general improvisation exercises before getting down to the nitty-gritty!
The first Junior Citizens class (who are all 9-10 years old) did some fantastic character work and really excelled themselves in the scenes that they made up. We've agreed as a class that character work is something we want to explore further and the general feeling seems to be that we are not so bothered about working towards a final piece and that we are quite happy to keep exploring new exercises and games and new ideas.
The next class, who are also all 9-10, worked really well in groups to explore the idea of "Haunted Christmas" that they had come up with last week. All 3 scenes that we saw had elements that will link together and the group decided that this is the route they want to take for the piece that they are going to show in their sharing. We've not got too many details ironed out yet but the plot is going to involve an Ice Queen, an evil sister/auntie and some killer Christmas trees... It's going to be really exciting to see how the storyline pans out and where we end up with it!
My last class on a Sunday are also Junior Citizens but they are slightly older as they are all 11-12 years old. This is the group that is working on " Who Ate the Gingerbread Man?". Despite working with quite depleted numbers this week, we created some really fab ideas for the piece and the improvisations and character work gave us some definite paths to explore. At the moment it looks like Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) is a definite suspect, as well as Little Red Ridinghood's Granny. We also played about with the idea of the Ugly Sisters and their hunger for fame and celebrity... this looks like it will have some really funny outcomes! We finished off by discussing the possibility of having a jury made of fairytale characters but we didn't have time to work through any of our ideas so that is probably where we will start next week!
Well, I always set out to try and make these posts as short and sweet as possible but I seem to end up getting excited and typing furiously... In fact, if I was to use one word to some up this weekend at Kids @ Citz, for me, it would be "excitement!"
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