(I don’t know what is up with youtube’s audio this week.  A lot of videos are flaking out.  You can turn up the audio on each one as it plays.  Sorry if you have a hard time hearing these.)

What a busy week!  Jack started drama class yesterday at the rec center.  He’s going to LOVE it.  He’s so into pretending lately.  He told me they pretended to be snowmen, that some kids were snowflakes and he was a stick, like this [lies on floor with arms pressed to sides].  I snickered inside, singing to myself and everybody’s saying ‘I feel the snow!’ ‘I feel the cold!’ ‘I feel the air!’ But I felt nothing.  He told me they didn’t do any Curious George, which the class was billed as being about.  I told him we would ask his teacher together next week.  But she sent out an email today about the class so I was able to read the schedule to him.  The email is so cute, I thought I’d share it with you

Hi! The actors did so well in class yesterday. They are so sweet, energetic, and creative. It is going to be a fun session! 


Yesterday, we did several activities to get to know each other and to get used to acting in front of each other. We readied our actor’s tools: imagination, voice, body, focus, and playing space by doing several drama exercises. 

Starting next week, we will continue doing drama exercises to develop fundamental acting skills and we will play act Curious George stories. I will be bringing in costumes and props for the actors to use. Here are the stories we will be acting:

1/21 – Curious George Goes to a Costume Party
1/28 – Curious George Makes Pancakes
2/4 – Curious George and the Firefighters
2/11 – Curious George’s First Day of School
2/18 – Curious George Goes Camping
2/25 – Curious George Visits A Toy Store
3/4 – Parent Sharing – Story TBD

Please remember to have your child use the bathroom before class. 

Thank you!

I love how collegiate the course material sounds, until you get to the reminder to use the bathroom.  Actually, many grown-up activities could use that reminder too.

Today was ballet class again.  Ballet and drama overlap for two weeks.  Today they added a new move to their repertoire.  These are chaines turns:

And this is how you introduce a three year old to chaines turns:

I had 1 1/2 hours after class to get him lunch, give Sam lunch, change everyone’s clothes, and pack up to drive to Bailey for musical rehearsal.  This was the first dance rehearsal of the year.  The number will including dancing with canes, which got Jack very enthusiastic.  He watched me working it out at home the night before, and I caught him copying.  He counted along and actually is doing moves from the piece.  Mostly he wanted to wave sticks in the air as long as he could, and I let him so long as he didn’t hit anything. 


My favorite part of the rehearsal was when I said “go upstage” to the dancers, and Jack called out to the leads who (correctly) stayed downstage that they need to go upstage too!  He totally knows his stage directions.  Amanda kept Sam and Jack happy for the duration, allowing a successful start to the show (at least from my end).

No videos of Sam, hmm?  Well let’s fix that.