Outsmarted!

image courtesy of picgifs.com

I've decided to do more work on acting in my classes. Not me acting--helping the kids develop acting skills. Right now we're doing guided improvisation at the very end of class.

Kids never cease to amaze me with the things they come up with. Some weeks everybody basically looks the same (example: in every class I asked to pretend to be one of the seven dwarfs, every kid just marched around). Other times I am delighted by the range of movement kids come up with.

And then there are the times when the kids just plain outsmart me. Some kids don't like acting or improvising, and they get pretty ingenious when it comes to getting out of the exercise. I'll tell you right now that if you ask a group of children to pretend to be an underwater creature, and your goal is increased movement vocabulary, there are a few things you should outlaw:

• No coral. Coral don't do anything.
• No kelp. Kelp are stationary with a little bit of waving around.
• No anemone. Never mind the part where I was impressed a kid so young could say "anemone"; these things move less than kelp but more than coral.

Kids are smart.