This week in our creative play classes for babies and toddlers, we played with many different circus-themed activities around "balance". We balanced objects, our bodies, and did partner balancing tricks (babies in the air!). Even though I'm not a circus-performer myself, I love leading circus-themed workshops for any age group because it is so different from the ways that we typically behave. We ask our bodies to do tricks and feats that we don't normally do on a daily basis - like bouncing a balloon on your head. We also interact with one another in very different ways, setting up challenges, giving loud cheers for silly acts. Demanding applause with a boisterous "Ta Da!!!"

These workshops are especially rewarding, though, when there are parents/caregivers working together with young people. We don't just ask the adults to watch and support, we ask them to fully participate and even lead. Some children need to watch a familiar adult model a new activity first before they are willing to give it a shot. This is true for balancing on one foot, but also for general silliness. It is so exciting and inspiring to watch moms, dads, grandparents, and babysitters shedding their serious, responsible role for 45 minutes, donning a red clown nose, and doing what it takes to get a big laugh from their baby.

When children see us being silly and taking risks, several important things happen. Firstly, they sense a permission for them to take risks and try new things. Children need to see that the adults in their lives are in control of their surroundings, but they also love to see us try something new and even fail. This begins to teach them the important lesson of resilience and determination. Even more importantly, though, when children see adults acting silly, it expands their perception of the world. "Mama is not just this, she is also THAT." It encourages the development of empathy, but it also sparks delight, surprise, and curiosity. If grandpa can be silly, be childlike, and balance on top of a big yoga ball, then who knows what else is possible!

This is one of the greatest delights I have in inter-generational learning, particularly with something as silly as circus. We can help each other learn in new ways, but both children and their adult companions have a chance to be surprised and delighted by what the other is capable of!

We began our first workshop performances of Under the Tree in Port Chester this last weekend. In honor of this performance, I wanted to share some of our thoughts about creating interactive theatre with very young (ages 0-5) audiences. We have to consider many, many things, and here are a few that we spent a lot of time thinking about while crafting this uniquely interactive show.

• Everything will be touched. And probably quite a few things will be chewed on as well. From the cloth drapes lining the walls to the glass-bead feet of the water skimmer bug puppets, we anticipted that every element needed to stand up to intense tactile exploration by small hands. We made sure that everything that needed to stay fixed was firmly attached, and that everything that was intended to be picked up could withstand a lot of use. Our aesthetic is very hand-crafted and we want everything we have in this show to look like it is made out of familiar materials, but even though it looks slapped together during an afternoon playdate, weeks of planning and buckets of hot glue went into ensuring that our props were up to the challenge of the audience.
• Teaching the rules. In any interactive theatre, the audience wants to have the rules for participation clearly defined. If you talk to the performers, will they talk back to you? Can you go on stage? Should you keep your shoes on? In theatre for young audiences, this applys doubly because not only do we have to teach the rules of participation to the kids, we also need to teach it to their adult companions. Kids are used to being told where they can sit, when they can touch something, so they are eager to learn the rules. Also, young children have much less experience with theatre, so they haven't been trained to sit quietly and passively watch - participating comes naturally to them. Adults, however, want to make sure that their kids are not misbehaving and bring a lot of baggage into the space about what an audience member's role is during a show. We decided that at the beginning of the show we would tell the audience "NO" before we told them "YES," letting them know that it isn't a free for all and that we would have certain rules about what you could do when. But after that we try to give them clear instructions (sometimes with our voices, sometimes by modeling behavior with a puppet) about how to move around the space and touch the objects. Once everyone is on board with knowing the rules of the game, it is much easier to sit back and enjoy the story.
• What IS the story? Children under 5 are largely non-narrative. While they are very interested in cause and effect and how incidents fit into a larger context, they are not particularly interested in a character's emotional growth or figurative journey. Under the Tree has a loose story of a young girl running away from home and finding a new hiding spot, but the "plot" of the story is mostly her discoveries within the new place. This perfectly matches the developmental desires of our young audience to experience new things within a familiar context and appreciate a story as it relates to their own experience. Half of our audience, however is much older than 5 and does need that narrative arc. During this weekend's performances we discovered that we needed more solid narrative action (or at least more clearly expressed action) for the adults in our audience and are currently working on finding stronger ways to "raise the stakes" and express the character's emotional journey.

It has been a great development phase for this play and we are learning so much from every audience we have join us "under the tree." I look forward to sharing more about our development in the future and producing this show in Brooklyn in June!

Today's creative play theme is "sound." We love exploring ways to turn familiar objects into something magical by using our imaginations. You can do this while investivgating sounds by turning household objects into musical instruments. Even your pre-crawling baby can turn a stool into a drum, a pot into a tambourine, and a cardboard tube into a trumpet. Take your small one on a search through the house and find creative objects that you can bang on, scratch, blow into, or shake and discover new noises in your house.

If you're looking for an extra challenge with your preschooler, start to talk about HOW the noises are being made. Is your new invention a percussion instrument or a wind instrument? Try drumming on three different sizes pots and discover the relationship between the size of an instrument and the sound that it makes.

If your child loves sounds and music, hunt down some YouTube clips of various instruments, or better yet invite yourself over to a musician-friend's house and let the kids see instruments in action! Nothing inspires a young musician by seeing music performed in front of them! Guitars are very common, but search around your community for other instruments your children can see live and then try to make one of your own at home!

Recent rain and sunshine means we are starting to see more and more colors around the city. Color identification is one of the main concepts being mastered by toddlers and preschoolers and springtime is a great excuse to reinforce these concepts. Here are some fun and familiar creative play activities that will focus your child's mind and eyes on the emerging colors in the world around them:

• Bring your baby to the flower stand and point out different colors and shapes of the different flowers. Let them touch and smell the flowers as much as is possible and polite.
• "I spy, with my little eye, something that is YELLOW..." Take turns with your preschooler spotting colors together as you walk down the street. Start with big and bold colors and move on to more subtle or small colors.
• Introduce your toddler to new names for familiar colors by sprinkling fuschia, chartreuse, aquamarine, and violet into your everyday vocabulary.
• "Color Collage" Choose one color that is featured prominently in a book you are reading with your toddler (i.e. "The Little Mouse, the Big Hungry Bear, and the Red Ripe Strawberry") and make a color collage by finding all red beads, feathers, paper, and stickers from your art supply drawer shelf and putting them together into an all-red collage.
• "Moving with colors" Encourage preschoolers to think about the energy and emotions behind different colors. What does blue "feel" like? What about grey? Can you move like the color yellow? Is it fast or slow? This will help your child start to think about how artists choose colors to communicate an idea or feeling.
  

Have fun playing with colors this week!