Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Keeping Children Engaged

A child can sit with a Barbie Doll or watch Wall E over and over.  Children are more capable of sitting and watching entertainment than adults, way more.

Children are singularly focused.  (Think Old McDonald.  He had a chicken, THEN he had a sheep, THEN he had a cow).  Children will focus on you if you keep the message simple and silly.

Keep your character focused, it takes a lot of energy to stay focused what you're doing but it's why you do what you do.  

If you are losing children's attention, consistently, it's pretty likely you have too much going on. Children can't follow the routine, so they leave, physically or mentally.   Don't have children try to remember a color, then remember a number, then the day of the week and that your name ends with a z.

 Card tricks don't work with children for this reason.  It's just too much and out of their development.  If your routine is like a card trick, remember the red 10 of diamonds, now it's lost in the deck and I shuffle.  That's a ton of information to process.  I got bored and lost just writing that sentence.

If you took a card trick, for children, it would go like this.  What color is this elephant card?  Red? Fred? He's dead? (reinforced the color by repeating it and rhyming it).  Now I'll take this red dog (it's an elephant), again reinforcing what the card is.  I'll put him with all the other animals in the zoo.  Uh oh, the zoo keeper left the gate open now the animals run out, they are everywhere.  (shuffling).  The animals are all mixed up.  Where is that elephant, (he's not in the deck), I can't find him... (look in your sock).  Hey there's an elephant in my sock.

That's basically the same card trick as when a magician takes your card and it ends up in a lemon or in his jacket pocket but singularly focused for children with a silly ending, it ends up in your sock.

If you keep it simple you can find lots of comedy with the kids.  With the routine I just made up, you can get the animals wrong, the children will laugh, you can get the colors wrong, the children will laugh, you can count wrong, you can count in Spanish, you can drop all the cards, you can forget the animal you were looking for.  Underneath, the children are focused on the red elephant and that they will see it again.

The clown comedy comes from being forgetful, from being lost, from getting things out of order.  The routine will work because it's one simple idea, where is the red elephant?

Take any routine you do, it should be very simple.  "I'm going to juggle"  "I'm going to make this rabbit disappear", "I'm going to put the colors of the flag in this bag and make a flag of the US".  On top of that simple message, you can create lots of laughter for the children and keep their attention for longer than you thought possible.    

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