Jeff & Laura Tolsma Family Blog: Musical Theater Camp!

I was looking forward to this camp all summer long! I was so excited to have Claire be my assistant and teach theater again. I've really been missing it!

We had 12 cute kids enrolled. They were excited and newbies to theater. It was fun to teach complete beginners. They caught on fast, and had a blast!

We played some fun theater games. These pictures were taken during a bizarre August cold spell. It didn't last long, and we are back to sweating again!

Claire and I planned the camp and decided to teach three scenes and three songs. We did:

A scene from The Wizard of Oz

And sang "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead"

A scene from Aladdin

And sang "Friend Like Me"

A scene from Mary Poppins

And sang "Supercalifragilious--"

I wrote all the scenes so that each child would have a main part in one of them and minor roles in the others. They were fairly equal and gave each kid a chance to have lines. This was the best idea - the kids loved being in each scene and I couldn't believe how fast they learned their lines.

Monday we worked on Wizard of Oz, Tuesday we worked on Aladdin, and Wednesday we worked on Mary Poppins.

Thursday was a semi-dress rehearsal day. We asked each child to wear one costume piece for each part they have. We provided some things, and they brought other things and it was great! Not too complicated.

Thursday night, Claire and I got everything ready....we hung the back drop, set up the yard, and decorated with gold stars.

And of course we had to sample the cookies we would pass out at the end of the show!

The kids worked hard all week to learn their lines, music, solos and choreography. We were so excited to show their parents all that they had done in one week!

My house was perfectly designed for this. The upper deck was where they kids changed into their costume pieces and it was a perfect staging area. The lower deck was the stage and we had just enough room for everything.