Beach Bum Theater

This week I am teaching a camp for 4 to 7 year olds called Beach Bum Theater.  It is through the recreation department here in York, Maine.  I have ten children, very enthusiastic participants.  Who at this age doesn't love to act things out and play pretend?  Also, who doesn't love to dress up in costumes at this age?

We began the camp the first day by writing a list of their favorite things, and their favorite things to do.  Many of them love princesses and unicorns.  Many of them love to swim and to go to the beach, so that is why we write a play about the beach.  What will happen on the beach, who will we encounter, who will be the hero, the heroine, who will interact with whom?  They also said they liked playing and they liked to be with their friends.  They liked stories and learning new things.

We decided since we have a big poster of a castle, that there will be three different princesses that get captured by an evil king, to the great chagrin of the well spoken, and morally correct queen.  The children wrote the script with my help and the help of my trusty aid, Ali.  They decided what parts they wanted to play, and thankfully, only three out of the nine girls wished to be princesses, so we have Rapunzel, Cinderella and Anna.  We also have the queen, and her King, the one boy in the camp.  We also have the evil lobster princess who works with the evil king to capture the other princesses.  We have a unicorn, a Merida from the movie "Brave" and two different dogs, one who helps Merida and one who belongs to the queen and has great wisdom, especially at the end of the play.

Many of these children are beginning readers, or are pre-readers, so we highlight their parts in the script but then have them learn their lines mostly by ear, by practicing the play over and over.  Today it was particularly hot and humid so we practiced the play twice and then sat on the cool floor making invitations to our play for this Friday morning.  Tomorrow we will run the play several times in the room where we will perform it.  The children all brought costumes today, one little girl had made a horn for her unicorn costume and a tail as well.  They are all quite creative and wonderful, so happy to be acting things out, dancing along with the musical breaks, and telling the audience their names and parts at the end of the play.

 This is one of my favorite camps that I do because it has the children writing, imagining, working with structure of a story, drawing, figuring out their costumes, memorizing, creating a character, projecting their voices and using their voices in new ways.  That is a lot to happen in one week when they are only four to seven years old, but if you start them at a young age, who knows where they can go with it?