Archive for February 2012
Disco and talent parties.
Posted on: February 19, 2012
On Saturday evening I had the privilege of spending a fun evening entertaining a wonderful group of nine and ten year olds. Normally my parties occur during the day with much younger children and involve a puppet show or craft activity. This party was a much more grown up affair.
The first part of the party was spent playing good old fashioned parlour games such as; wink murder, twenty questions, truth or dare etc. The children were encouraged to be dramatic in everything that they did and we did have OSCAR winning deaths in wink murder. As the children warmed up and lost their inhibitions everything got sillier, livelier and time seemed to run out very quickly. It was an absolute pleasure to have such fun with a bright vibrant group of children.
After a short refreshment break it was time for the disco – it was the first time that I had chance to see my disco lights flashing without the sun diffusing them somewhat. The room had a small dance floor that seemed to have been made for the scope of my lights to fit in perfectly, we started with ‘Grease Lightening’ and graduated on to ‘Agadou’ and ‘YMCA’ – we enjoyed every minute – I thoroughly enjoyed having a great excuse to behave as I did when I was ten. (I recall my mum, brother and I doing Agadou whilst watching children’s television during the school holidays). I think that some of the parents enjoyed the excuse too because they joined in wholeheartedly.
We continued until party food time with air guitar, strike a pose (a fancy game of musical statues) and plenty of energetic dancing. While the children were eating their food I wrote down acts they wanted to perform for the talent show in the last half hour of the party. I was expecting everything that they wanted to do would be really grown up and aspiring towards teenage ideas, but no we had the pleasure of ‘Bob the Builder’, ‘The Wheels on the bus’ and ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ which was great. It was wonderful watching the children enjoying themselves and thoroughly appreciating each others’ company.
The lovely thing was that the children were not in a rush to leave and asked me if there were any more activities that they could do. I know that the children enjoyed themselves – I also enjoyed and cherished every moment of the party and will remember the personalities and the smiles on the children’s faces for a long time.
- In: Fairy tales
- 1 Comment
When I saw articles about parents refusing to read traditional fairy tales to their children because they are too scary, I thought I needed to comment because my whole business is based on fairy tales.
If we look at the very traditional tales such as; Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears and the Three Billy Goats Gruff, we actually see a recurring story scenario which is used in many blockbuster films and the most successful books. We have a bad person who tries to spoil the life of the good person and has many attempts. The good person always outwits the bad person and they always live happily ever after of course unless there is a twist.
Reading fairy tales teach children the very basic format of story telling and enable them not only to retell the story but also recount activities they have been doing that day. Most of these tales have been passed down by word of mouth and published versions tend to have a lot of input by the author – if you decide to tell your child the story rather than read it you can soften everything – I like to let the children consider how the bad guy may be feeling, as in the case of the Troll in the Three Billy Goats gruff, he is bad-tempered because the goats keep waking him up and he is tired so they all come to an arrangement and the goats wear slippers so they all live happily ever after.
When we are talking about scary fairy tales I think that it is the horrible and really quite macabre tales written by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. These tales are dark and shocking in their content but again have probably been written for a particular audience – I would have to research their readership because they were certainly not written for children. However we can strip away the darkness and add sugar and spice to the stories and make them more child friendly – Walt Disney was a genius at doing this.
I know lots of little girls and boys who thoroughly enjoy fairytale parties and as long as the baddies are not too scary – they actually like being a teeny bit scared and booing and hissing at the naughty characters. Anyway we must come to terms with the fact that life is full of wolves, cunning foxes and trolls – we only get our happy endings when we develop strength of character to outwit them and not let them take away our happy ever after. Also there is a little bit of wolf in all of us – don’t you just like being naughty once in a while?
One of the best things I like about my job is spending time with people when they are celebrating the happiest times of their lives. One of those times is during a wedding day, normally between the wedding breakfast and the evening celebrations usually during the speeches. This lull seems to be the time that children need to be children and let off steam and parents need time to talk amongst themselves and think about their own enjoyment for a short time.
The type of entertainment we have developed combines entertainment and a crèche facility enabling us to supervising the children to ensure that they are safe and that we know where they are at all times – children tend to like to wander back to parents if everything is too relaxed. One of us concentrates solely on the under fives while the older children have a more chatty and relaxed supervision. It is essential to have two people supervising the children because you can’t stop a two-year old from wandering about when your hands are stuck up two puppets and performing a puppet show.
All staff members are either qualified and experienced teachers or teaching assistants because we believe that there should be no compromise when caring for precious children. After the puppet show we tend to do a craft activity followed by something active, such as a search around the room looking for clues. If the older children’s shoes allow it we also play on the spot moving games to get rid of the energy pent-up after sitting and eating a lot – we also do party games giving the children chance to warm up for the disco. All activities are clean so that the children won’t return with paint, glue and glitter all over them.
Our role at the wedding is very much in the shadows, normally in a room next to the dining room – we are there solely for the needs of the children and rarely seen by the adults. The children are so beautifully dressed and seem quite grown up, they always seem relieved to have a break and they sometimes ask about what types of things are said during the speeches and discuss the events of the day. Children are treated in the way they act – if an older child requires a lot of help then they are helped and if a younger child is striving for independence then we assist them accordingly. The oldest children will carry out activities relating to the theme but will be able to approach them in their own way so that they can explore their own ideas. The children aged five and under will be given activities with the Early Years Foundation Stage in mind in order to develop their basic skills. Most of all, the children will have enjoyed themselves and be refreshed for the next part of the day and so will the parents.
More and more people are including children in their weddings these days and are making sure that they have part of the day themselves.
