Using theatre to learn life skills

The skills your ‘Little Stars’ will learn during the carefully planned theatre classes in English are not only skills they can apply in the class, but will be valuable life lessons they can use again and again in the future.  There are so many ways the classes will develop your children but here at ‘Little Stars Theatre’ we have chosen just a few that we feel are the most important!

1)  Confidence:  Your children may start the classes feeling unsure, they may feel nervous, shy, unsure of how to act around the new people they meet.  The careful way the activities are planned will be sure to get the best out of your child.  They will feel safe and secure and start to open up much quicker than you think.  If your child is shy and timid, this will be just the environment to help them come out of their shells.  I remember when one of my pupils was only just 5 years old.  During the first class he started crying and when we asked why he had come to theatre he said ‘I don’t know why I am here but my mum just dropped me off and I want to go home’.  Within no time that same boy was laughing and having fun with his classmates and now has developed into a fantastic actor taking on huge parts in our musical plays.  Confidence, the key to opening so many doors for your ‘Little Stars’.

2)  Accepting other people’s views:  When carrying out improvisation activities there will be many instances when your child will experience people with different views and ideas.  The classes will teach them to appreciate we are not all the same and also have a more empathetic approach to other people’s feelings.  They will also be meeting many other children from different ages and backgrounds, a different mix to what they encounter in school, and all of this in English too.

3)  English:  if your child studies English in school perhaps it is just for a few hours a day, or maybe they are in a British school but you want them to practice their English even more.  In a theatre setting they will practice English during improvisations, listening to others contributions and acting to respond quickly.  Not only this, they will develop their communication skills, think about how to deliver a line, how to use tone to add emotion, timing, their body language.  All of which will help them in the future to be top class communicators.