​Playmakers: Giving Your Child a Creative Leg Up on Learning
The Playmakers’ Youth Theatre organization is offering classes for children and youth from three years of age through high school beginning the week of August 25
Due to limitations of the current pandemic, class sizes for younger students will be limited to no more than ten students. Specific precautions will be in place such as temperature checks, masks, and social distancing. The Playmakers is located at 121 W. 3rd Street in Grove.
The basis of the newly designed curricula is the flexible “creative process” that can cultivate the imagination and provide a discipline that can sustain it in students for many years. This process will be beneficial no matter the specific field students may choose in life or the problems they may encounter in often unstable workplaces.
Using this process, The Playmakers’ curricula will focus on building performing arts skills. Sciences will be used to facilitate development of artistic skills. Classes and individual work will be age specific. Children who remain in the program will progress to the next level of learning.
Specific information about each type of class can be acquired by leaving a message at The Playmakers, 918 786 8950, with your name and the phone number and best time for us to return your call in order to discuss your particular interest. Also, information on schedules, fees and available scholarships, and specific pandemic protocols can be discussed then. Or, you may email The Playmakers at groveplaymakers@yahoo.com.

A Creative Leg Up on Learning— Playmakers Youth Theatre Program, beginning in August, 2020
 
Curriculum, 3-4 yrs of age:  
Take one big step into activities that are fun.  Learn the basics of the performing arts—music, dance & acting—guided by various animals, birds, fish & reptiles that have masks on their faces. These creatures will give you the means by which you can learn or increase what you know about tempos, levels, space, shapes and energy…the building blocks for exercising that vivid imagination you have.  By the end of twelve weeks you can stack up these blocks and show off your best moves to music.
 
Curriculum, 3-4 yrs of age:  
Take one big step into activities that are fun.  Learn the basics of the performing arts—music, dance & acting—guided by various animals, birds, fish & reptiles that have masks on their faces. These creatures will give you the means by which you can learn or increase what you know about tempos, levels, space, shapes and energy…the building blocks for exercising that vivid imagination you have.  By the end of twelve weeks you can stack up these blocks and show off your best moves to music.
 
Curriculum, Kindergarten & 1st grade:  
Like to make faces?  That’s good, because they are  important if you like to perform.  Using written words and songs, guided by the same zoo-type guides as  younger students, you will use a poem or a short story as the basis for your own dance or song.      Express those words!  Let’s see those facial        expressions too!   Create a “revue” presentation, using tempo, movement and language to show to your friends and  family at the end of the semester.      (You’ll learn what a “revue” is as well.)
 
Curriculum, 2nd & 3rd grade:
Let’s see that imagination of yours shine!  Move among some good examples of our local trees and their leaves in a field trip or two.  Explore how they are different and how they move to their own dance. Get ideas with which to tell a story, write a poem or a short play about trees and leaves.  Then express your written creations about them through a dance, a song, even a short monologue or dialogue.
Combine levels, dimensions, and movement into this original creation for a special presentation.
 
Curriculum, Upper Elementary: 
On Your Feet, students!  Observe!  Music has patterns, dancers make patterns. Nature has patterns, our hearts beat out a pattern.  Architecture uses patterns as do seamstresses. Highways show patterns that you can see from above.  Math can help us understand patterns, just as visual artists can illustrate them. You get to observe patterns that are all around us and weave them into your very own artistic presentations for a showcase performance.
 
Curriculum, mid-school beginners in the performing arts: 
Would you like to go to Mars? Are you taking   robotics in school?  Whether your answer to either question is yes or no,  come explore the idea of a Mars-like planet through the arts.  Use existing plays, movies, old  radio plays, as examples in order to create your part in a  program of songs, rap music, robotic dances, monologues, duologues, short scenes.  The sky’s the limit on artistic ways to bring the current exploration of space and the development of artificial intelligence to audiences by the end of twelve weeks.
 
FULL STEAM AHEAD FOR mid-school and high school students:
 
Students in these grade levels who have participated with The Playmakers in previous classes or productions may chose this more concentrated STEAM program.   You will use the creative process to       design your own presentations that emphasize a performing art and its inherent science. Such examples may be the inclusion of math or physics in dance and music, or math and engineering in set design and construction.  Specific sciences can help develop acting abilities as well.  Others might learn how color and light influence costume and set design.  Individual presentations may include film and visual technologies.  All the presentations will be integrated into a production created by the students.