Yes it's that time of year when we get to inflict new and cruel, humiliating scenarios on our powerless little kids - it is time for Spring Assembly. Last year, regulars may recall the resplendent easter bonnets which I forced all of them to wear, including the little boys.
This year I thought we'd up the camp quotient considerably, with a play featuring a bear that is dreaming during his hibernation - dreaming, naturally, of scenes from Cinderella (which we've been covering in Literacy), incorporating a Bollywood dance routine at the ball, a chorusline of mice and life-size tea-cups a la 'Beauty and the Beast', and ending with a spring daffodil dance to awaken the bear, all to the tune of 'Here Comes the Sun'. (I know, I know, I'm such a hippy.) The girls are going to love it. The boys are going to hate me. I'm racking my brains, but I can't shoe-horn any guns or swords into it anywhere.
It all sounds like fun and games but is immensely stressful getting them to stand up, sit down, remember lines - I turn into the worst kind of hysterical fascist-dictator director and utterances such as 'Ibrahim! Show me your jazz hands!' have not been unheard of. Give me strength...
About teaching and crying
1 day ago
12 comments:
I remember using your post on Easter bonnets as part of the live blog quiz!
Ha ha - that's so funny. You could say that the daffodils have magic laser beams that come out of the middle trumpet bit and can do spells - the boys might like that? Or is that me being too magic mushroom about it all? It might be a nice contrast to the gentility of 'Here Comes The Sun'?
A "spring daffodil dance to awaken the bear"? Sounds excellent, if sorta trippy, when do the tickets go on sale?? You could get the boys to do a scary growly bear dance at the end - like, "Hrrrrrgh! I've woken up after months snoozing and I'm proper HUNGRYYY! I need to KILL and EAT something! GrrrrAAAAAAAhrrr!" with mimes of mauling small innocent fluffy animals or somthing. Actually, do bears kill and eat stuff apart from fish...? That's gonna bug me now.
Is Ibrahim the one with the "fat bum"?
A weight problem and insufficiently syncopated hands. Poor kid.
Arrgh! I have worn such Easter bonnet once. I still have nightmares occasionally.
Billy - good lord, is that really a whole year ago?! I missed the live quiz -bah.
RoMo, you can tell you know all about boys. They'd love daffodils with lazer beams, especially if the lazers KILLED EVERYONE IN THE AUDIENCE...
Violet, brilliant thinking! Ravenous flesh-eating bears is right up their alley. Off to google 'what do bears eat?'
Tim - slander! Ibrahim does NOT have a fat bum. He does have syncopation problems - like many
men, dancing is not his forte.
Hi Taiga! I missed you there, sorry. I know it's cruel, but it amuses me...
Show me your jazz hands - that's hilarious! Good luck for the bonnet show.
What do you mean you cant see any guns? One word - hunting! The bear wakes up and finds himself being hunted! By Prince Charming!
thanks RoMo - having an early crisis as my CD burner has bust and I am loathe to go out and buy a whole CD of the Annie soundtrack (the play will also feature Cinderella cleaning up to the sounds of 'It's a Hard Knock Life'.)
Hi Joe - Joe, it takes a boy to think like a boy (if you are indeed a boy) - good thinking! It could end in slaughter and carnage!
Annie,
I went to a catholic school. Easter bonnets were the devils work, they spoke of nature and lust and, well, more lust, and lustiness. The nuns at our school had diamond hard knuckles and used the needle end of compasses to score initials like KAPS (kill all protestant scum) and ABCIAHC (a beaten child is a happy child). I know that last one doesn't fit on five fingers but they could sometimes squeeze more than one letter per knuckle if their hands were large due to a life time of gripping small throats.
Sorry, you've set me off again. I wish you had been my teacher at school. Sigh.
I do too Dan - though I would still have made you dance the daffodil dance, which would have been mentally if not physically scarring...
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