Saturday, May 30, 2020

Drama Dress Up Day

This term we introduced Virtual Drama Dress Up Days - the children have loved it! One of our favourites was when we all dressed up as birds, learning to fly for the first time.
Dressing up is a great way to get children to transform into their characters and make the activity come to life. 

By using objects they had at home, and clothes from their (and mom's) cupboards, and with a dash of creativity we had the most colourful and exciting birds in town! 

The lockdown has presented us with a surprising bonus. In some schools or studios, it is just not practical for children to take part in our dress-up lessons. With everyone one being at home, this is a brilliant way to add another level of excitement and creativity to the lesson. They can use props, and even select a setting or “stage” where they can do the activity, like in the garden for the birds or the kitchen for the chef.
TEN weeks is an extraordinarily long time to be confined to your house and unable to go anywhere fun and exciting. Giving children the opportunity to transform their house and garden into a forest or restaurant or desert island or haunted house is a great way to give them some ideas of how to start playing pretend more often and give them a break from their electronic devices to use their imaginations freely.
Electronic devices used to be their fun time, their “escape” whether to watch animated movies and programs or to play video games, and there is one thing these things all have in common – the children don’t have to use their imaginations much, the graphics and animation are so amazing these worlds seem real.

What a lucky happenstance it is then that we have a beautiful moment to teach our children how to step away from these devices, which is now a learning tool (and not only for fun as much) and reignite their own ability to create worlds and stories beyond anything they have ever been spoon-fed by popular culture. Let’s help them, through dress up and imaginative play to try new feelings, come up with fantastical ideas and let their imaginations soar!


Sunday, May 10, 2020

Friend or foe, that is the question:


January 2020:
"Johnny, please go play outside, you've been on your iPad all day!"April 2020:
"Johnny, please stop playing outside, you haven't been on your iPad all day!"
Who would have thought a mere few months ago that our iPads, mobile phones and laptops would become our most valuable partners in education!

Long gone are the days (well, actually not so long!) that we obsess about too much screen time and worrying that our children’s brains will turn to mush from looking at their mobile devices for more and an hour a day!

It's true that in many countries, like in North America and in Western Europe many education systems have successfully integrated technology and multimedia as part of their basic education platforms, but nothing like it is now and most certainly not in most of South Africa.

It is actually phenomenal how we have been able to embrace technology as a teaching tool, and especially the mobile device, and how we have started using it, neigh, depending on it to bring all sorts of educational material and programs to our youth, as is the case with Helen O'Grady Drama Academy. We made an almost seamlessly smooth transition from face-to-face classes to delivering our classes on multiple platforms, from pre-recorded lessons on Facebook, to live Zoom lessons right in our students’ own homes. To be honest, there was a lot of frantic paddling beneath the surface for the first few weeks, but for all the world to see, it was swan-like and graceful
😊

And it has been a roaring success! Drama has just been one of those subjects or activities that works brilliantly on a screen. The children enjoy it, they participate with gusto and are incredibly creative under these conditions. Perhaps we should not be surprised - children have known for years how much fun it can be to stare at a screen and now we are capitalising on it.

But it does beg the question though, what happens when this is all over? When life can go back to a more familiar routine of leaving the house, going to work and attending classes again face-to-face? Do we abandon all we have created and established during this dark time in our history and pretend it was just a bad dream, or do we continue with a hybrid system of face-to-face classes and an online offering to those who might not be able to attend classes in person? All our hard work and lessons learnt for the greater expansion and footprint of our amazing Academy?

I guess only time will tell, but it would be interesting to watch. I, for one, am very excited about what our future holds. 
Here are a few testimonials from Happy Parents:
Mrs Dinath: You doing an awesome job with them 😘 Thursday is the highlight of the week!
Mrs Govender: Yes and the kids are loving it as well. This is the new way of life I guess until further notice 😊

Mrs Paruk: Thank you for introducing the kids to Zoom! Both Uzayr and Isa loved it!
Mrs Nel: Hi Juliet, G is enjoying the videos, thank you. We do one video per day. G likes me to participate with her. The length of the videos are perfect! Not too long and not too short, and they are wonderfully engaging. 
And testimonials from Teachers:

Hi Juliet! It was lovely. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m very impressed with how these kids stayed engaged. I was wondering how that would go and if they wouldn’t lose interest. You are such an amazing teacher even on screen😉Larisa Grove JP Drama Teacher Redhill
The kids are loving the Zoom lessons! - Tanya Gerasimo Reddam House Early Learning School, Deputy Head


If are interested in finding out more about our Online Pre-recorded and Zoom Drama classes please feel free to contact, Principal Juliet Jordaan, on 0829091630 or email juliet@helenogrady.co.za

Friday, May 1, 2020

Much needed Comic Relief

We are now approaching our 6th week in Lockdown and the fatigue is starting to show. Parents are taking strain as they try to juggle work, home schooling and entertaining children during their off time, not to mention cooking and cleaning.
It is now more than ever we need to keep our Drama classes entertaining, fun and engaging for much needed Comic Relief. Many children are under immense pressure from school and their Parents who are, justifiably, concerned about their academic progress, as well as the inescapable boredom and cabin fever setting in. They also just miss their friends and the social interaction at school – children are (for the most part) social creatures who are at their happiest surrounded by their peers.
This is where we step in – Drama is, in its simplest form, a form of escapism where students get to interact with their Drama friends and to just have fun, laugh and be silly – especially during lockdown!  It is also a creative outlet where they can take a breath away from the books, as it were. And honestly speaking the kids just love the lessons! We even have some lessons continuing on the Public Holidays because the students couldn’t bear not doing Drama for a whole week!
So, we just need to keep on bringing our A-game to each lesson. This is when our Parents are going to appreciate us the most and the children become lifelong devotees and so cement the future of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy whether online or face to face.