Can't do another bible musical next year. That's stretching the friendship. And 'Easter - The Musical' is a little confronting. So how about a Roald Dahl musical? The Enormous Crocodile? The Magic Finger? Any other suggestions? Needs to be pretty short.
But what about RE? Need something big to draw things together. How does this sound. An art show. We go hard at teaching all year and try to draw out certain themes, have a few little riffs that we keep repeating (We know God loves us because he sent Jesus to die for us, Faith is believing that God will do what he said he'll do...) then towards the end of the year give the kids our list of themes (God's love, faith etc) and ask them to create an art work depicting one of them. We give them a few weeks (in RE time) to work on it, and offer prizes. We get them to write a couple of sentences about their art work, then mount them up nicely and display them in the school hall (hmm... or church hall). We have a special week at RE where we give out prizes and choose a few paintings to talk about - maybe we'd chose some depicting God's power in creation, God's sadness at sin, God's love in the cross - and give a little talk tying them together.
We could make it a whole family event. Put on afternoon tea or something. Make it look like an art gallery.
What do you think? Would it work? Would it be worthwhile?
Don't know if it would work - you know your kids better than me! - but if they did the work, I can imagine parents would be stoked to come along to the kind of gallery thing you're talking about, and would be warmly disposed towards RE teachers who don't just download but instead make kids more cultured!
ReplyDeleteMusical...if you can't teach the content, what about teaching the concepts? So something that revolves on theme of self-sacrifice, for example?
Or a cut down Pinocchio?! If you cut it down just right...call Pinocchio something like Everyman...
I think the art show idea would work well - I've seen in done up in Townsville in the high school but there's no reason it wouldn't work with primary aged kids. The bonus of having kids do serious artwork is that can be either taken home and displayed or displayed in the school for a decent length of time.
ReplyDeleteAs for the next Christmas musical - would you have the time/energy to write a new one every second year? Make a tradition of it?
A Roald Dahl musical would be awesome. I still think you should get your choir to do an 'ImprovEverywhere' segment too.
Art gallery idea is brilliant. Go for it!
ReplyDeleteDahl's book "The giraffe and the pelly and me" is short, action-packed and has songs already sprinkled throughout it. Would adapt easily.
You obviously have not come down from the adrenaline high yet if you are already mentally working on next year.
Simone, your creativity & energy astounds me!! I really like the art gallery idea & I think you could incorporate lots of examples of 'Christian' artwork through the ages. A nice touch would be inviting along some Indigenous Christian artists - there are some friends of our rellie Anne G who do beautiful dot paintings of biblical stories which they sell to support their youth group work in Logan. I think that would be a powerful witness to kids & parents about the gospel crossing cultures.
ReplyDeleteSchools often run art shows as fundraising events so I think parents wouldn't feel "threatened" at the thought of coming along to something like that the way they might if you said it was an "RE Christmas service" or something. That said, our school just had a Scripture Christmas service to close the year at the regular Scripture time the kids have on Tuesday afternoon. Parents were invited and I had good intentions of going but just didn't make it in the end. THe kids came home with a cool comic strip of the Gospel story that they seemed quite keen on, with the local Pressy church's contact details on the back for further info.
ReplyDeleteI admire the energy you have too! I wish I had it some days.
Our school 'musical' was "The Silver Chair" based on the book by C.S. Lewis. I wrote a script and each class sang a song which kind of related to the story. If you like, I can send you the script via some friends of mine who know you so you can look at it (and make it shorter). If you have a decent choir you can change the songs to ones which fit the theme a little better - or you could even compose them yourself!
ReplyDeleteYour art show idea sounds great!Each year, as part of out town festival, our church runs a 'religious art' competition with a theme. There is a children's art section and the artwork is displayed in the church. Last year the theme was 'The Heavens Declare the Glory of God' and the year before it was 'Run the Good Race.' Several children always enter, and the artwork is always interesting. People from outside our church always come and enjoy looking at the artwork.
ReplyDeleteYou may not be able to display artwork at your school, but parents might still be keen to come along to see artwork displayed in your church.
Where do you get all that energy? I love the art show and fabulous for those kids who are tactile learners especially.
ReplyDeleteIf you're ever stuck for a pithy story to turn into a musical, I recommend Lang's various coloured fairy books (you know, the Red Fairy Book, Blue Fairy Book, etc - there's four or five of them) - huge compendium of folk tales and bound to be one there that gets you inspired.