Daily Archives: November 10, 2022
Helen O’Grady at Schoolkutti Library
When the Helen O’Grady speech and drama class entered the fourth week, the kids were all prepared to play the characters from “Ashoka, the Great.” Just like other Saturdays, the session started with their favourite drama song and speech exercise to help them project their words while delivering lines. To prepare the children for their roles as characters in the major drama and to assess the depth of their understanding of drama, they were separated into two groups and given a short scene and a handful of dialogues, then instructed to extend the scenario with many more dialogues and perform on stage. They all did an outstanding job without any surprises. Following both groups’ performances, the conversation regarding how to employ properties successfully on stage was also mentioned. The previous lesson was also about deciding on and assigning appropriate characters to the children. The drama “Ashoka, the Great” officially began after the character division. The dialogue and the significance of giving each character different emotions were addressed in the last lesson. Throughout the drama lesson, everyone’s body language represented the royal people’s attitude. The lesson closed with a discussion about how they could modify their personalities to make them even better.
Storytime
Was the dress truly magical, or had the cloth manufacturers tricked the emperor? When we read “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the children were spellbound. Despite having a multitude of outfits to wear every day of the year, our emperor desired for a splendid outfit for the royal parade. Boris, the emperor’s servant, found Slick and Slimus, the cloth makers who could produce not only splendid garments but also magical clothes, after combing the entire city for the greatest cloth makers in town. But there is one problem: only smart people can see this cloth; stupid people cannot. In his excitement to wear and flaunt the new wonderful magical cloth, our emperor failed to recognize that he had been fooled by the cloth producers. The emperor wore the miraculous fabric and marched in front of the public on the day of the royal procession. They all gasped at once but they didn’t want to appear dumb, so they all went like excellent, magnificent, splendid, and so on and complimented the fabric that he didn’t have. However, when a child saw the emperor, he yelled out that the emperor had no garments. The kids all agreed that there were no clothes on the emperor. Innocent minds, such as kids’, cannot be fooled. The kid’s remarks spread like wildfire, and the emperor recognized his folly. The children were giggling at the king’s stupidity. Sometimes the world operates in such a way that individuals only do what they are supposed to do, fearing that they would look foolish in front of others. For the word game, we did crossword puzzles, and we were very delighted to wear the crowns we created for the crafts. The children declared loudly that they are global kings, not fools like the emperor in the narrative.
