More Drama Games!

Check out yesterday's post about drama time set-up and beginning activities.  Today, I will explain 3 more drama games we play at our weekly drama time.  Remember, for all of these games, we are sitting in a circle on the floor (each kid on their own carpet square).  The first game is Magic Wand.   For awhile, we used this duster from the dollar tree as our magic wand. It worked perfectly for about 2 years, until it's feathers starting falling off.    

So now we use this fancy one (one of my assistants found it for us) that lights up and makes noise.  Basically the game goes like this:

*Kids take turns using the magic wand to turn other kids/teachers into different things.

*The kids have to first pick another kid/teacher and then say "I make you a _____" while pointing the magic wand at someone.  (I.e. "I make you a frog").

*The the chosen student needs to act it out.  (I.e. the student squats and hops around the room saying "ribbit.")

*To aid students just starting out, I gave a choice board of different idea they could use.  Now, my students don't need the choice board....they come up with lots of fun ideas on their own!

*The game continues until everyone has a turn (no repeat turns).

*To make the game more challenging (and to work on our students' attending skills), we occasionally play without the magic wand.  Kids have to sit on their hands.  They are not allowed to use the student's name when choosing.  Instead, they have to make eye contact with the student they are choosing and still say the same phrase ("I make you a _____)"

Another simple game we play is called emotion dice.  I taped some pictures of different emotions on a small Kleenex box.  Kids take turns rolling the box and acting out the emotion they roll.  This game is usually pretty quick (sometime we do it as a part of our warm up). You can have all the kids act out the emotion, or just the one kid who rolled it. I like to use a hand-held mirror during this activity so kids can see what they look like when acting out an emotion.  To make things more challenging, you can ask a kid to make up a reason "Why?" they are feeling that emotion.

One of our favorite games is Present.  Who doesn't like getting presents?  And for this game, you can get whatever you want!  We pass this box (I know it looks a bit worn out...haha) around the circle.  Each kid takes a turn opening the present and saying what they got.  Then they have to act out their gift (i.e. pretend to jump rope, play computer, build blocks, etc). 

Again, when we first started out, I had a choice board (velcroed to the inside of the box), so kids could get ideas of what might be inside a present.  Now, my kids are able to come up with their own ideas for this game as well.  For an extra challenge, we do not use the physical box at all.  Instead, the kids pretend to pass an imaginary gift around the circle.  Each kid gets to choose what size gift the next person will get.  For instance, I would hold my hands like I am carrying a very small gift and pass it to the next kid.  They would then need to think of a gift that could fit in a box that small.