he’s standing in the center monologuing! the whole class did a great job in their school play. very proud of them all! while odin isn’t shy standing up in front of a crowd hasn’t been one of his strengths. doubly proud of him for doing in and projecting his voice.
odin in his garb. not quite as impressive without the eye patch ( d’oh! forgot to have him put it on ) but a great costume nonetheless!
we went to the public school production of dr. doolittle so odin could watch one of hockey buddies ( in the back in this shot with mustache ). great play. everyone did a super job! note one of the actors recently, literally, broke a leg.
odin’s maker table has a copy of “how to do nothing with nobody all alone by yourself” sitting on it so we certainly don’t need much convincing of the correctness of new research that reinforces that “children should be allowed to get bored so they can develop their innate ability to be creative” which, amusingly, is pretty much what percival chubb was saying in 1911 in the new york times, “Not knowing how to play themselves, parents do not realize the necessity of making their children play. A child should be kept childish, and his interest kept in childlike things. “his development should be slow rather than rapid.”
i started the day enjoying a two hour overview of odin’s upcoming first grade walfdorf class pleasant ridge which really, really made we want to go back and re-do first grade myself and we all ended the day watching the eighth grade class perform an adaptation of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” ( every year each grade – the entire grade – puts on a play ).
they did a really great job and imbued the play with tons of heart and humor and we enjoyed it all that much more because we recently read “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. odin thought it was neat to see a bunch of kids he knows sing and act while telling a story.
bookending the day with the two events made me think odin is going to be able to look forward to some fantastically awesome grade school years.
thanks to his education at a waldorf school, odin is quite familiar with storytelling and theatre. he regularly comes home with tales of playing this character or that character in a play and has had quite a few opportunities to see older grades put on productions. but today we took him and five friends to see his first “real” theatre, a musical production of The Secret Garden put on by university of wisconsin-richland theatre.
i guess we should have read the synopsis of the musical version of the book ( which he’s read and thoroughly enjoyed ) because we were all a bit surprised by its emphasis on the adult characters . despite it’s billing as “fun for all ages” it really was more appropriate for the 13 and older crowd. that said, i was amazed to see the kids sit through the 2.5 hour production without too much trouble and with lots and lots of questions about lighting and how they moved the sets from one scene to another.
and our evil plan is already working. odin went to bed asking when he can see more plays 🙂
