Today is World Theater Day, a very special day in which we will not be able to go with our boys and girls to see a performance, today # quédateencasa. However, if Muhammad does not go to the mountain, we will bring the theater home.
Before recommending some plays that you can put on at home, we will tell you all the benefits that reading, doing or participating in a play has. Because children do not do theater or learn theater, but play to create, invent and learn to participate, to speak and to listen, in a word: to collaborate.
Benefits of practicing theater for children
Children's theater brings many benefits to young and old. With this entertainment you favors their intellectual and emotional development, their curiosity is piqued and they improve many of their personal skills and, most importantly, they will have fun and socialize. And beware! the purpose of doing theater is not to become a professional, but to have fun.
Through the theater workshops, children develop their imagination, oral and corporal expression in a guided way. Theater helps children connect with their bodies and their emotions. It is especially recommended for those children who are withdrawn or Shy, but always without forcing.
In addition, both the stories and the practice exercise itself instill in the children values in which they can be identified. Through the experience of the characters they learn vital attitudes.
Beyond interpretation
Children's theater workshops are much more than the representation of the play. Children learn that beyond actors and actresses there is a previous work decoration, costumes, rehearsals, learning the text.
When you prepare a play you create a complicity environment in which the children are shown as they are. The natural abilities of each are enhanced, they manage to help each other to achieve a common goal. Teamwork implies values such as responsibility, collaboration, respect, empathy, commitment and tolerance. Thanks to the design of scenarios, among other things, creativity and imagination, an innate ability in boys and girls. However, it is being restricted due to the abuse of mobile devices and television programs that does not allow them to create their own fantasy.
The academic tasks of reading, drawing, art, and scriptwriting are reinforced. Literary texts, adapted to each age, allow them reinforce knowledge of language, history and art. It is shown that they improve their verbal expression, greater fluency, vocabulary, clarity, diction. Children feel more secure, gain self-confidence, and increase their self-esteem.
Theater plays that you can start to put on at home
Even if you are not specialists or theater monitors, in these days of confinement you can begin to instill in your children the love of theater. If they are older through the texts, you can recite some interesting dialogues, from Don Juan Tenorio's It is not true angel of love, to Shakespeare's monologue of Hamlet.
But if your children are younger, we recommend another type of content. From the 5 years the child can read, understand, and their memory power is high. They absorb everything they hear whether through text, poetry or songs.
You can dramatize and script traditional tales like The Presumed Mouse, in which 6 or more characters intervene. Let's the whole family to act! Another recommended story is The Cunning Mouse, in which the value of generosity is discussed through 4 characters. More than 8 characters are involved in the Emperor's New Suit, but you can simplify them. This is a work with values on appearances, flattery and sincerity.
These are just some of the qualities that theater has to develop children's values and attitudes, take advantage of them! and happy theater day.