If you read my last post about Röena Studio then you may be wondering what we will be doing to make our school into more of a studio. In our studio, I want to bring more of the senses into our learning. This is something that I love to do already, as evidenced by some of our learning experiences in the past (here, here, here, and multiple posts here) but between starting a farm, having Crosby a couple years ago (and the good but more complicated dynamics of older kids plus a baby), as well as just life, it’s been harder for me to find the time and energy as consistently to plan these sensory loaded experiences. This is one big reason why I have been so grateful for Belle Ame At Home.
This is only our second week of being a part of this but it has already been so amazing and added such richness and depth to our learning. It has brought those sensory loaded experiences back for us but I haven’t had to be the one to plan out all the details and that has been so nice. This doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to add in my own style and details and create our own unique experiences but having some of that weight off my shoulders actually frees me up to be even more creative and find the energy to do more of these things again.
So as part of Röena Studio, it’s only fitting that we put on shows just like real studios. Our plan is to have a studio show once a week where we share our learning with each other in a fun and engaging way. Each week will have similarities but each week will be different as well.
Last night we had our first Röena Studio Show. In Belle Ame At Home we are following the Well-Educated Heart rotation so this past week we were focusing our collecting, connecting, and creating on explorers (Vikings, Marco Polo, Columbus, and many others). As such, our studio show was based on this topic and we dressed up as explorers (using whatever we had around the house).
We decided to have our show outside on the stage in the tree fort and although it was fun to be outside and that added some beauty to our show, the cicadas were extremely loud and our neighbor was mowing his lawn for some of the time so the audio part of our show wasn’t the best. I decided to just roll with the chaos and it added some sense of humor to our show. All in all, the show wen’t really well. The actual performances probably only took about 15 minutes but between stage changes (and a few costume changes from the girls), we were out there for about 30 minutes.
We started off our show with a couple short scenes from Little Women, performed by The Theater of Classicals. This of course doesn’t go along with our explorers topic, but Evelyn and Roxanne spent many hours out in the tree fort playing Little Women over this past week (even the excessive heat didn’t stop them…good thing it’s shady in there) so I suggested that they present a little part of the play for us to watch. They were of course happy to oblige. The first scene was from one of the March sisters’ plays that they performed in the book. The second scene was when Meg sprained her ankle at the dance.
After their performance we cleared the stage of their props and then the kids and I danced to a Sea Shanty song. The dance was led by Crosby so all 6 of us just followed him and did whatever dance moves he did. It was pretty funny and Crosby loved it.
After our dance Porter told a story about Marco Polo, the one that we learned in our storytelling class this past week.
Then Evelyn played A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea on the violin while Roxanne and Crosby sang the words. Crosby loves this song so it was really cute to see him up there enjoying that. He even spontaneously did a little bow at the end and it was adorable.
After that last performance the kids showed us what they drew in their sketchbooks from their Monart art class.
This is when things started to break down because Crosby got really upset that he doesn’t have a sketchbook. I need to get him one.
The next part was where we were going to share things from our notebooking but Crosby was still upset about the sketchbooks so after Evelyn and Porter quickly showing us a couple things, we decided to end the show and head inside.
When we got inside we had our refreshments: the recipe that we made for our cooking class. While we were eating I shared a couple of my notebooking pages from this pas week.
Even with the humorous chaos of the cicadas, Crosby’s meltdown at the end of the show, and the mis-read from a “shall-not-be-named” child on the Almond cake recipe resulting in triple the amount of salt (and therefore very few bites from us), we all enjoyed our first show and we’re already looking forward to our second one this next week.
