Drama at home

With three kids in the house there is always a little bit of drama that finds itself in our day, but that is not the drama I am talking about.  I have ventured into a new area this school year with acting out short plays with the kids.  I have one child that would seem to have a natural tendency for the performing arts, but he isn’t interested in taking a class anywhere.  So, I’m introducing the topic at home and seeing if it sparks an interest in him.

I’ve seen an added benefit to drama too.  It gives additional practice reading aloud and helps the child practice using inflection and expression.  Even if my children never desire to take a drama class I think we will continue drama at home for awhile because I have seen it help with reading out loud skills.  In the picture you will see my boys practicing their narrator parts with  toy microphones.

So how do we do drama with only 2 kids?  We are using Readers’ Theater this year.  To start off we divvy up the parts between the 2 boys and myself and we all end up with several different parts.  I thought this would complicate matters, but it has actually made it more interesting.  They have to practice using different voices for each part.  It sure makes for a few laughs when a child forgets to change his voice.  Once we have read it through once or twice we add actions to our reading of the play.

Readers Theater goes by different grade levels.  Since I am using the same level with both my boys I chose a reading level that was a little hard for my younger son and not too simple for my older son.  It has worked out well.   Readers Theater is available in book formor as a downloadable file to easily print off plays at currclick.