Making a Scene!

This term at RYSC, they have been 'Making a Scene!' - a fun and dynamic writing, directing and acting project for all ages. After a series of workshops covering storyboards, scene setting and plot development, they moved on to rehearsals, with each writer directing their own scene, and appearing in the scenes of others.

creating the marshmallow tree

adding the finishing touches to the marshmallow tree with Lottie

having makeup expertly applied by Lucy

I think Madi has particularly benefitted from working with, and learning from, older children. RYSC is her favourite activity of the moment, and I'm not surprised as she is learning some really quite difficult concepts whilst having an awful lot of fun in a very supportive environment.

curtain call

The scences performed varied greatly, starting with Laurence's hysterical performance in 'The Writers' backed up by Georgie, who made a superb straight man. There were also some very thoughtprovoking scenes about war and global warming, and some that were fun and fantasy, including 'Humpty Dumpty- What Really Happened' in which Madi performed a butterfly dance, and King Cadbury and the Alien Invasion, in which she was an Oompa Loompa! In 'Ruby Chants', she went to have her fortune told, and then she dismissed the notion of a fire brigade as a very pompous queen in 'The Fire of London'.

West Side Story

At the start of a very busy week, JK took the role of Bernardo in New Youth Theatre's performance of 'West Side Story' at the Palace Theatre, and on the same evening Madi took part in 'Making a Scene' with RYSC. It was fantastic (and brought a little tear to my eye!) to see how much JK's confidence has increased since joining NYT. The arrogance and menace really came through in his voice and mannerisms, and although the choreography was much more complex than previous shows, he took it all in his stride and I was startled by his stage presence. Photos from the show are taken by SDR-Digital, and I hope Simon won't mind me posting a couple here with this link to his site.

the other three Rs...

...or reduce, reuse, recycle! As part of our ongoing work on the environment, I had arranged two visits for HE families to our local Materials Recycling Facility to find out what happens next to the contents of our green bins, and the first of these was today.



Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos inside the actual plant, although Amy, the Waste Awareness Officer, has promised to send us a disk of stock pictures.


After a quick introductory talk, we donned our flourescent jackets and hard hats and headed in.
It was very dusty, and very noisy, so we were grateful for the headsets which allowed Amy to explain to us what was going on. I was amazed to find that their greatest problem is video tapes, which get tangled in the conveyors- it would never occur have occurred to me to put these in the green bin!

Monthly Mail and a busy first week in March

Madi had this article published in the March edition of the 'Monthly Mail'.

A BUSY FIRST WEEK IN MARCH

These education days:

1. WORLD MATHS DAY

2. WORLD SPELLING DAY (NEW)

3. WORLD BOOK DAY

bring the whole world together to do a very special thing.

You might hate books or maths or even spelling but the thing is what I’m about to tell you makes it fun no matter what.

World Book Day

Now I presume most of you have heard of World Book Day, which is on 3^rd March. Some of my friends that go to school dressed up as book characters for the day, and hopefully you will all have got your £1 vouchers to get a special free book or £1 off a book you choose. So I will concentrate on the other two which are World Maths Day (WMD) and World Spelling Day (WSD).

World Maths Day

WMD is whenever it is 1^st March anywhere in the world so for us that is from 28^th February (or 29^th if it is a leap year) to 2^nd March.

You answer maths questions as fast as you can and earn a point for each question you get right. There are 60 seconds in each of the games. You are only allowed 3 wrong answers before it is ‘GAME OVER’! You compete against children from all over the world, like Japan, Spain, Egypt and Australia etc...etc...etc...

You can play as many games as you want but the aim is to play 100 games. There are 5 levels each getting harder and harder and you can count 20 games from each level to your score.

My total score was 2585, which is pretty good, but the champion for the 4-7 year olds this year was from Eric from Australia who scored 6995. That means he got nearly 70 points in every game!

World Spelling Day

If you thought you had time to recover, here is another challenge for you. WSD is new this year and is on whenever it is 3^rd March anywhere in the whole wide world. It works the same as WMD but with spelling questions. This time I did it on my mum’s iphone. You can do it on computer or iphone or ipod or ipad. I found the spelling much easier than the maths, but I think it will be harder next year when I am in the 8-10 year old group.

I am quite cross because with doing it on the iphone I can’t find my total score so I’m not sure whether I will get my certificate.

If you would like play games of maths and spelling next year then what you do is you go to www.worldspellingday.com for spelling and if you want maths this is the one www.worldmathsday.com and then you register yourself. You can try it out all year to see what it is like.

Now before you think you are going to win a game against little ones you will be put in your PROPER age so you can go against other kids or teens your age and that will happen when you get registered.

Hope you manage to get on the web to do it and good luck for next year.

The good news is, that after writing the article we did find out how well she had done in World Spelling Day, 7th in the world for those using iPOD! And even better news is that there are plans for a World Science Day event next year too!

Barn Owls at Rushcliffe and The Science Museum Live!

This month's Wildlife Watch session took us to Rushcliffe Country Park to meet Misty from the Rushcliffe Barn Owl Project. After identifying different breeds of owl in a quiz competition between the children and grownups (no prizes for guessing who won!) we learnt that barn owl numbers have declined by 50% in the UK in the past 50 years and thought about some of the reasons for this.

Then it was gloves on for owl pellet dissection...

before heading outside for a run around in the sunshine... ... and finally off to the Nottingham Playhouse to join other HE families at The Science Museum Live On Tour! This was a sort of National Curriculum science meets Saturday morning telly type show, with the two presenters demonstrating energy transfer, forces and states of matter and introducing famous scientists and key inventions, with lots of audience involvement, silly costumes and small explosions. Our favourite part was the mini hovercraft ride round the stage.

maths

Maths is still very much a part of our daily routine. Madi continues to enjoy Mathletics, and is proud of her first gold certificate.

Recently we have been looking closely at fractions, and are still practicing times tables.

More Performances!

On Sunday afternoon we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves watching many of our HE friends perform 'Idle Jack'. As reported in 'This is Lincolnshire' ...

TALENTED local actresses woke up a muddle-minded character from a children's picture book to raise money for Save The Children.

Idle Jack, along with his mother, a thatcher, a beekeeper, a goatherd, a baker, a butcher, a beautiful maiden and a menagerie of animals were brought to life in a hilarious musical production by Homemade Drama.

They brainstormed ideas, perfected the script, made props and costumes, publicised the event, baked cakes for the after-show refreshments and did brilliant singing and acting.

North Muskham Community Centre was packed for the event and the audience included the Mayor of Newark and several local volunteers from Save The Children, who were delighted with the £81.32 raised.

Then, this afternoon we went to see Michael Morpurgo's 'Private Peaceful' at Newark Palace Theatre. I'd previously tried to arrange a group visit to see this in Mansfield but there was no interest for an evening performance so was delighted that eight families joined us. This was the first time we had visited this small theatre, which is gloriously old-fashioned and ornate, with excellent visibility from the whole auditorium, so I will be keeping an eye out for more here.


Private Peaceful is performed as a soliloquy, as he looks back over his life whilst awaiting a firing squad at dawn for disobeying orders. It is an incredibly powerful piece , and we left feeling quite numb in spite of the beautiful sunshine outside.

In complete contrast, this evening we are going to see Hairspray with friends from dancing. Still thought-provoking, but a lot of fun too ;0)

Brewhouse Yard, Balti and the Birmingham Philharmonic

We made an early start this morning, on the tram to Nottingham for a visit to the Museum of Nottingham Life at Brewhouse Yard.

Having successfully completed World Maths Day yesterday, Madi was keen to take part in World Spelling Day today, so she used my iPhone to compete whilst we were travelling.

After a quick stop off outside the Castle for a picture with her archery hero Robin Hood, we walked round to join our group at the Museum. The children were given a short introduction to what life was like living in the houses that make up the museum in Edwardian times, then took part in a self-led trail around the museum taking in reconstructed rooms and shops from the 1900s.

After a picnic lunch and play outside with friends, in the afternoon we went over to the school room in Rock Cottage. The children tried on costumes, and then had lessons Victorian style, with a very strict schoolmistress!

But the day was not yet over.

Madi chose Tamitanga for tea (a recent addition here to the chain that describes itself as 'urban indian canteen'), somewhere neither of us had been before, but Indian food is one of her favourites and this didn't disappoint and we'd definitely go again; the food was delicious, very good value and the service very speedy. And according to Madi, the mango juice was just amazing!

And then we joined other members of the Nottinghamshire and Nottingham City Family Orchestra and Choir (NNCFOC) for a performance by Birmingham Symphony Orchestra of
Adams The Chairman Dances
Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Falla Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Gershwin An American in Paris
It was Madi's first experience of live classical music, and she loved joining in shouting 'Mambo!' but today was such a big ask of a little person, and she really was exhausted by her long day and actually fell asleep during the last few minutes, and only stayed awake on the tram by chatting with friends from orchestra!