April 27 - A Penny Show

               Recently a friend posted that her son loved listening to the Star Wars station on Pandora.  I love Star Wars music, but had never thought to create a Pandora station around it.  I immediately remedied this situation.  The depths of John William’s scores are so alive, transporting you out of your house somewhere else. 

                With my newly created Star Wars station as a backdrop to this afternoon’s play, Nate and Elli had an amazingly creative kid directed, TV free playtime.  While Nate has never seen Star Wars he is captivated by the idea of space travel and concept of battles between the good guys and bad guys.  Initially I had turned on the music as a backdrop to a painting project.  Shortly after the music began, I was the only one painting.  Nate and Elli returned to yesterday’s Lego play for quite a while, with a much better give and take than we saw yesterday.  I happily painted away; listening to them play.  Spy music is very fun to paint too; my brush just wanted to leap around the paper creating lots of stops and starts that incorporated curves. 

                As a song would catch their attention they would stop playing and go to the computer to see what a song was.  At one point, Nate noticed that it was a Transformers song, another interest that must have grown out of playing at school.  He and Elli stopped playing with the Legos and turned into Transformers zooming around the room.  Elli was a pink Transformer that twirled.  It was not long until they were looking for the puppet stage and drawing their own paper Transformer puppets. 

                One of them came up with the idea that they should put on a show for us when Jeff came home from work.  The stage was set up facing the couch so we could have comfy seats.  It was determined that we would be charged $ .01 each to view the show.  Jeff, being a gentleman, generously paid my admission when he was greeted at the door by two eager children. 

                Nate prepared the puppets backstage while Elli came out to greet their audience.  “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to our show!  I’ll tell you a few jokes before the show starts.”  We sat with anticipation.  Elli’s delivery of the following jokes was priceless and had us in stitches.

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Banana!”

“Banana who?”

“Banana crossed the road!”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Apple!”

“Apple who?”

“Apple crossed the road with the banana!” 

                The show began.  The first round was very quick.  Nate used the puppets he’d made and Elli used her princess wand as a shooting star.  Both shows were battle scenes and good triumphed... I think.  Then Nate grabbed the finger puppet box, a repurposed Oatmeal box.  Out tumbled a bunch of puppets.  The spider, dragon, king, queen, and princess were chosen for a rather complex impromptu show about a spider knight who captured a dragon and locked him in the Lego jail.  The dragon somehow escaped and kidnapped the queen locking her in the jail.  The king rescued his queen while the knight spider recaptured and did away with the dragon.  Between each scene the carefree singing princess took center stage singing and “twirling.”  The show was priceless and well worth the $.01 entry fee. 

The casts from their puppet shows.

               

          Nate got home from school at 2:30 and I went to grab supper a little after 5:00.  For two and a half hours they were totally engaged with a backdrop of John Williams and other related composers.  Their play often mirrored the music.  It was delightful.  These times are so important for their development.