Act It Out: Getting Started

Looking over my blog, I realize how heavily I rely on improvised verbal storytelling and have neglected getting into action. The reason is because verbal stories have been what seem to delight and inspire LP's imagination but as I'm working to challenge her to expand her play, it is good to challenge us both into more active storytelling.

Getting started can be easy...while sharing a story (either made up or already known like a fairy tale), find a place to do a little action together. You can flutter like butterflies or wiggle like worms. You can feed each other pretend spoonfuls of the Three Bears' porridge or clip-clop clip-clop around like the Billy Goats Gruff.

You don't have to commit to acting out the whole story to introduce action into storytelling... although acting out whole stories is something I look forward to with great anticipation!


This post is a part of the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

Return to Play

Things haven't been feeling so playful lately at casa de Improv-a-mama. LP's sleep is a mess and therefore so am I. I know it is a phase (most likely brought on by the combination of being almost three + starting to use the potty + transitioning to a big girl bed) but still, I've been feeling off my game in all areas of my life.

So I've been trying to remind myself to find some improv structures to add play into our day when it isn't coming from me in any kind of organic way and when I find myself saying a lot of "no" and wanting to sneak away to read or websurf the second LP's attention is on anything else. I find the structure so helpful AND it takes a lot of pressure off needing to be creative. So the main structure is find something (anything) to say "yes" to and then play with it.

Today play also served some other aims as well.

On our rainy walk, a beanbag purple cow (named "July the Space Heater"...after the cat at preschool and her favorite object) became the vehicle for play. I would place July in a bush and then start looking around calling "July....LP, where's July?" And LP would trot over and find her with joy. July got in trees and fences and behind trashcans and then got to try out a tire swing. And (here's the bonus), LP walked so much more than usual. She's been wanting to be carried everywhere and I so want her to walk more without me becoming a nag about it. Hurray for July the Space Heater and walking Hide and Seek! (And hopefully the extra exercise will help on the sleep front)

Then at lunch, LP was asking and asking and asking for "parfaits" (a la Fancy Nancy of the book of the same name). We save ice cream for a special dessert for Shabbat evenings so I said no but offered to make almonds into French "almondine" by slicing them. She was totally into them and enjoyed asking for another almondine (I sliced them one at a time at the table). Bonus was getting the extra healthy food in her.

Even finding these little bits of play in our daily routine lightens the mothering load that lack of sleep was making feel quite heavy. Remembering that simple "yes" and then just letting an activity grow from that almost always leads to new discoveries for us.

This post is part of the Moms' 30 minute blog challenge over at SteadyMom...go on, check out what other moms are blogging about.

Tell Me A Story: Poetry

My fallback storytelling is to start with what is in front of me. I use details from what I'm looking at or something we did that morning or some concrete event and tell stories from there.

And I've realized that is quite useful, it also can be limiting when I only rely on those techniques.

And I've also realized that LP has NO PRECONCEPTIONS about poetry and all the delightful things that make something poetic (simile, metaphor, imagery and so on). So all the fear voices in my head that criticize my poetic efforts are now dismissed.

So recently I'm reminding myself to play with those things and tell a story about the trees talking with the stars in the sky and a cloud's adventure floating overhead and to imagine eating ice cream is like eating a snowdrift.

This also evolved into a game yesterday when LP was cuddled up in my lap after we spent a good bit of time attempting to plant potatoes (various mishaps occurred, it is quite possible they won't come up). I blew on her and said "Mama is the wind and LP is the tree with lots of leaves" and she giggled. After a few times she started to rock against me and I said "LP is the ocean crashing into Mama as the beach." And she said "crash, crash" getting more intentional in her movements. After a minute or so, she cuddled in again and said "I'm a bird" and when I said "and I am a nest" she said, "Where's mama bird?" So I became that instead.

It was sweet and playful and seemed to fill her up more than a cuddle on its own. (This is pretty crucial these days when I am so hungry for her to play more independently).

Improv for Tired Parents

Narration is one of my favorite things to turn to when I am feeling weary and LP wants more and more and more from me. A day like today.

I simply narrate what she is doing and spice it up with a bit of color/description. Sometimes choosing a genre helps keep it fun too. When I'm narrating, I start with what is actually happening and then embellish a bit. Sometimes LP accepts offers from my narration and other times they are just for my own entertainment. (My own sitting or lying down entertainment!)

For example:

Nature Documentary
"LP sits on the floor lying in wait. She picks up Norma Chimp to help her track down the missing blanket. With Norma in one hand, she is ready."

Sports Announcer
"And next on the couch for the world's biggest pillow pile is LP with the green pillow! She stacks it carefully...and oh! The pile is falling. LP is under the pile and look, there....she is up again!"

Newscaster
"In today's top headlines, LP is going for the world record of hanging on her mama's leg."

Today's post is part of the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom. Thanks Jamie for the continued inspiration to get up a post up on Tuesdays!

Write, write, write!

This blog post is part of the Moms' 30-minute Blog Challenge over at Steady Mom.

Ten days in and I am still an active participant in National Novel Writing Month. Which is thrilling for me. I hit my initial goal of 10,00 words (50,000 words is the goal of the project) and set a new goal of 30,000. After sitting on that for a few days, I realized that I should just leap for the big one....so my new new goal is the whole shebang of 50,000 words.

19,250 words down; 30,850 to go.

Things I've discovered:

*LP is willing to go head to head with my desire to be writing. She has upped the whining ante but also is having some breaks in the whine when she is distracted by entertaining herself in play.

*Participating in Steady Mom's 30-Minute Blog Challenge the past few weeks has helped me see that I can write in a restricted amount of time. While I try to a chunk of time of 30-60 minutes at least once a day, I've also discovered I can pound out 100-200 words almost anytime I get my fingers on the keyboard.

*I would not have been able to do this challenge years ago. Back then I think the goal-oriented word count focused nature of the beast would not have inspired, where as now I'm somewhat addicted to checking my word count.

*It feels great doing something that is completely for me.

*LP is less likely to interrupt me if I stand up while I write.

*The temptation to reread and edit is so strong; I have to constantly remind myself that crafting the novel, forming its shape and honing and refining character and action are all a future activity, now is just about letting the words flow.

*Improv is so helpful for the writing process! Whenever I'm stuck (say every 10 minutes or so), I use some improv activities to trigger my imagination and get going again. Here's two of my favorites with links to descriptions (I modify them to use for writing):

• Color/Advance (also called Narrative, Color, Emotion)
  

This is my main one. When I'm stuck on the action, I move to coloring in the picture or feelings. When I'm tapped out on those, I see if I can move the action forward.

• What comes Next?
  

I use the most simple version of this...really I just take a breath and ask myself "what comes next?" and try to take the simplest, smallest thing that comes to mind.

• Ask for a suggestion/blind offer

Sometimes it helps trigger my imagination to get something from the outside to work with...much like starting an improv scene from nothing is often more challenging that getting some kind of audience suggestion (a location or name or feeling). Last night I asked LP what the next word in my novel should be and she replied, "Please." (Which surprised me but also says a lot about what's been going on around here). So that will be my next word and I'll find out where that goes.

From a lots-of-things-happening the rest of the month (like a show opening! Let It Snow goes into previews on Nov 19th!) (and teaching "Every Day Improv" next Sunday), it is going to get more and more difficult to find pockets of time to write AND I'm going to keep pushing forward and writing words as fast as I can.

A Stroller Adventure

This blog post is part of this week's Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge over at Steady Mom.

Last Monday was our first day of childcare swap. Our little bud Z came over to our house for a few hours after preschool.

It is about a half hour walk from preschool to our house. So I had LP and Z in a double stroller (which is surprisingly more heavy than the weight of the two kids plus the weight of the stroller). About two minutes into the walk, it started to rain. And Z didn't like the snacks I brought. And LP & I aren't wearing raincoats (at least Z is). And it starts to rain harder. And harder.

The kids were actually pretty relaxed about the cold rain coming down but I was not a happy camper and we still had a good 20 minutes of walking to go.

And so a game was born.

I started with an open question about what they could see from the stroller. That didn't inspire anything, so then I asked Z if he saw anything in the large bush up ahead.

"Lions! I see Lions"

What a delicious offer to all of our imaginations! So we spent a few blocks looking for lions and even occasionally roaring at them. Sometimes I'd ask one of the kids to describe something or point a lion out to me and sometimes Z would spontaneously point one out. This evolved into being in the jungle as we went down a block with lots of greenery reaching over the sidewalk.

It made a challenging walk home fun and certainly took my attention away from the rain and all the other things going on in my head (wondering if Z was going to be happy playing at our house, my self-criticisms of not having LP & I in raincoats and so on and so on).

This is a great "quickie" improv activity.

First, make an open-ended offer to your kiddo's imagination (like asking "what's in that bush?" or "who's hiding under that leaf?"). You can play with the scope of the question (in my story above, my more general question of "what do you see" didn't get any response from the kids but focusing on the bush inspired Z's imagination.

They will either 1) ignore you because something else is cooking up in their minds already, 2) ask the same question back to you or 3) give you an answer that opens a door to more.

Then build on it. Which can be really simple. See the lion they see and then be excited to see the lion they see. Find out what the lion is doing in the bush or move on to another bush and see if there's a whole jungle of animals on your street.

One of the wonderful things about an activity like this is that it doesn't have a specific beginning, middle and end. So you can stop and start as their (and your) interest dictates and those lions will be waiting for you to rediscover another day.

One Activity Improv Challenge Follow-up

I had a lot of ideas for mess-making. A LOT of ideas thanks to many friends and some internet searching. Most of which didn't get used but the warm up to focusing on saying yes to the mess was helpful and fortunately, ideas don't go bad.

And in focusing on saying "YES!" to messy projects for a week, I learned (or relearned) a number of things.

• Process, process, process...it is all about the process. LP was totally happy playing with the shaving cream so we didn't get around to adding food coloring or paint. When I set up paper mache, she wanted to play with the ripped up newspaper, the cardboard, the tape and the glue in turn but wasn't interested in putting those elements together. AND I also had reinforced that LP's body is her favorite canvas.
  

• If you love it, do it again! LP is always a fan of playdough and clay. She was particularly happy with the homemade playdough that I made with this cornstarch/baking soda recipe. I think she used this at some point every day, some times on its own and other times with paint and toys.
  

• There is always room for more YES! LP wanted cornstarch and cornstarch and more cornstarch to play with. She made a small "snowdrift" and rolled around in it and wanted more. Sadly we were out but oh, how I wished for a huge box of cornstarch to see what would happen.
  

• Ask myself "why not?" When I didn't want to do something, I asked myself why...when LP wanted to add playdough to the paint, my first reaction was "no" but really, there's no reason why not. This question also lead me to some rearranging. LP has an easel but it despite her love of doing things art-related, it wasn't getting much use. Now the easel is on an easy-to-clean-up mat (instead of the hardwood floor) and has open space around it (at least lessening the opportunity to paint and color "accidentally" on other things).
  

• And ask myself "why not?" again. By focusing on saying yes to mess, I also was giving myself space to look at when I say "no" (or want to say "no") and check out why. I also was able to pay attention to how to make our transitions out of messy play a better experience for us both (start early, give lots of verbal prep and break it down into small steps...I've tended to be all gung-ho and then go "oh no! I have to make dinner" and rush from one thing to the next which is not the way to go for this 2.5 year old).
  

So it was a worthwhile experiment and one I'm sure I'll do again.

The One Activity Improv Challenge

I've been in a rut. I like to think of myself as "mama-who-embraces-messy-play" and philosophically, oh yes, I do! And....the reality of messy play is sometimes not something I want to deal with (i.e. clean up after). I've noticed that over the past month or so, I haven't been as open-to, generative or creative about finding the fun mess.

LP is oriented to tactile experiences. She's the kid painting her arms and legs and sometimes hair who can engage with clay for an hour and who is so happy when there is glue involved because she delights in that texture. She's the kid taking a mud bath and rolling in the sand. It makes us a good match...I love the idea of messy play and she's all over the reality of it.

SO here's the improv challenge for me...how can I say a bigger YES to messy play?

Over this week, I'm going to look for opportunities...maybe it will be about incorporating new materials or about finding a way to go for it even more in the getting messy. Maybe it will be about me getting more into the materials simultaneously (I have to confess I often use messy play time as a little "me-time" because LP gets so engrossed in it). I'll be finding out and after I've cleaned up, I'll post about what I learned.

AND here's the improv challenge for you: take an activity you enjoy doing with your little person and see if you can say YES to it in a new way. The activity can be art, playing ball, gardening, reading, racing toy cars...anything at all. Experiment with different ways to offer more engagement with something you both like to do.


This morning I got the ball rolling with an art project...it started with glue and paint and evolved with more paint, cornstarch and some bits of nature from the back yard:

Once upon a time...once upon a time...

There is something magic to me about the phrase "once upon a time..." I have a recollection of reading that all known languages have some equivalent phrase which is a cue for a story. (Though it doesn't cover all known languages wikipedia has a fun to read entry with a list of common story beginnings and endings in a bunch of them. I'm particularly intrigued by the many versions that start with "There was, and there wasn't....)

One of the sweetest sounds to me these days is LP prompting me to participate by saying "Once upon a time..."

Recently, she has begun telling me some very short stories. Tonight I discovered that if I repeated the phrase(s) she had just said, she would add the next detail. It went something like this:

LP: Once upon a time...
Me: Once upon a time..
LP: There was...
Me: Once upon a time there was...
LP: A frog!
Me: Once upon a time there was a frog...
LP: A frog...in a blue shirt looked for flowers.
Me: Once upon a time there was a frog in a blue shirt who looked for flowers.
LP: Pink flowers!
Me: Once upon a time, there was a frog in a blue shirt who looked for pink flowers...
LP: To smell and smell.
Me: Once upon a time there was a frog in a blue shirt who looked for pink flowers to smell and smell.
(Then LP was done with both the story and her dinner.)

Really something to watch her creative mind in action, pulling together different ideas. I was surprised by how quickly she jumped on adding elements and seemed engaged by my repeating the whole of it.

Storytime - take a new path off a familiar trail

Today was my drop-in improv story group at Habitot (habitot.org)....This has been my first month and it is a great lab for ideas and learning experience for me.

The age range of the kids in the drop-in group as been a few months old to around 4 years old...my practice lab at home with LP is exclusive to her specific 2 year old development so I have to bring a focused improv mindset to work with the range of abilities and interests int he room.

Today I experimented with using a mix of the familiar to get started and then following/creating a new story based on the participation.

I prepared for my internally titled "Chicken Story Day!" by reviewing the stories of Chicken Little and the Little Red Hen and remembering to bring my props (a stash of homemade seed "pods" I've been making - all stuffed with green fabric to pull out to make plants grow and lovely generic blue, green and yellow large pieces of fabric to serve as whatever was needed).

I also used familiar songs and let them get a "twist"...starting with "Hello, everybody, it's so nice to see you.." which the kids know from a bazillion storytimes, music groups, etc and using that song to "wake up" the different animals on the farm.

The Chicken Little story had a chicken puppet using one of the seedpods so then I passed them out to all the people - big & little- to work together in planting a full crop that we planted, watered, helped grow, harvested and finally feasted on.

Although neither story wandered too far off the familiar path, I think this has a lot of potential as a "story prompt" when my making it up well is dry. The LPs of the world can always help trigger our imaginations to tell the story of the three golf carts when we were headed off to tell the Three Little Pigs again.

On a funny note, LP spent most of the session amusing herself with different puppets and other farm props in the area except for coming up to me on a fairly regular basis to say "sing a song." So then...there were songs (one improvised from scratch, one take-off on a known song and one version of "Twinkle Twinkle" as sung by ducks).

Silly Stories

My friend Trina and I were talking about linear vs. nonlinear storytelling and how the story-spine guides a particular kind of linear story. She's in educational publishing and is also bilingual (Spanish) so had some insights into how an emphasis on linear stories is very American.

For variety, treat your kiddo(es) and yourself to a nonlinear wordplay or story treat!

There are many, many examples in children's literature and these often are based in funny rhyming and made up words and just plain old delicious word play.

A few ideas:

Rhyming words back and forth. LP loves to do this and the "rules" such as they are include any word rhymes that she says, we can repeat words and make up words ("ishkaboo" and "blue" and "new" all rhyme with "new")

Tell a story about a favorite animal and see how far you can get with rhymes (see if you can let go of making "sense"). For example: There once was a duck, a lucky duck, lucky dippy ducky duck who drove a truck with lots of pluck into muckity muck. (That satisfies for a whole story sometimes). When we build on that, I ask LP a question like "what did the duck do next?" or "who did the duck meet?"...sometimes it simply loops back into the rhymes we did (if I remember them, otherwise it is all new territory) and other times moves forward as the duck and crocodile nap for awhile, while they smile in a pile that went for a mile.

A purely gibberish story. Gibberish is a made up language that anyone can speak...it can be as simple as "blah blah blahblahblah blaaaaah blah" (think the adults in the Charlie Brown specials) or in an animal language (The cow told a story "Once upon a moo, moo moooo moo moo"). Use inflection, intonation speed, emphasis etc to give meaning to it. You don't need to know what the meaning its, this is all about playing with language.

Sound effects story...all about adding those fun noises. "Walking through the mud I squish, squash, sploosh. The rain pitter-patters, patter-pitters then comes down with a whoosh! "

Those are my first thoughts about it...please do share your ideas too!

Color everything - there are no lines!

Here's a simple one that I'm getting a lot of mileage out of these days.

Color - which in improv is all about description, to verbally color in the scene, character, story, moment, etc.

LP is very into (and loyal to) her stuffed buddies. Yesterday the way out of a tantrum/meltdown of the "I'm not napping" origin (a very long one at that), was when I started to describe Mona Cow who she was holding onto. Something like this:

Once upon a time there was a cow named Mona Cow. She was a brown cow, a light brown cow with dark brown spots. She had two eyes. She had two soft brown ears and two small soft pink horns. She had dark brown hooves. She liked to stand on her back two legs....she wore her favorite sweater. The sweater is orange with pink trim.

And so on, and so on...really stating the obvious. LP would cue me about what was most interesting to her that she wanted to hear again ("she had horns") or more about (as she kept playing with Mona's sweater to see if it would come off).

I "colored" for at least 10 minutes, maybe more. This could easily turn into a story. In this instance, LP was inspired to have Mona Cow want to read a book so we read the books of Mona's choice (Goodnight Gorilla and Mrs Wow Never Wanted a Cow).

Variations: Describe what your little person points to or is looking at, ask your little person questions to help with the description or just tell a descriptive story (no action necessary, all scene setting and then it can be foundation to come back to and expand into an action story...if this evolves with Mona Cow, I'll share it)

I find this really good for me when I'm feeling uncreative, overtired and a little cranky...suppose I could've used a nap too.

Story Spine

One of my favorite improv exercises is also a great tool for telling stories with babies/toddlers. Called the story spine, I learned it from Kat Koppett (a most fabulous improvisor/teacher/trainer and mom...check her out at koppett.com) who I think learned it from the originator, Kenn Adams.

Here's the structure (just finish the sentence and voila! you have a story)

Once upon a time...
Every day...
Until one day...
Because of that...
Because of that...
(repeat "Because of that..." as often as you like)
Until finally...
Ever since that day...

Optional ending line: The moral of the story is...

Seem familiar? Most fairy tales and a lot of kids' stories as well as novels, movies, etc fit in this story structure. Simple & brilliant!

When LP was a very small one, I would use this to make up very short stories for her. It evolved into part of our nighttime routine. Bath, diaper &pjs , milk, swaddle and a made-up story. For awhile I got into a groove of an ongoing made-up story (starring Baby LP, of course with her friends Baby Bird and Baby Turtle). The stories were oftensurprisingly moralistic to me. Maybe as a new parent, I needed a world that was very black and white in terms of right and wrong. It was a comforting stance although I seem to be back to a more seeing the gray, humanistic, and well, blurrier view of things.

Over time, realizing that LP wasn't judging the stories AT ALL, I started to relax and let myself be more playful, explore new avenues, nonsense avenues...and let my daily experiences, the real where I was at, filter in. Well, perhaps more than filter in...in one particular episode Baby LP saved the day as she protected her friends by scaring off the terrifying squirrel with projectile spit-up.

Now that LP is older, this structure supports our telling stories collaboratively. It is an activity that we can do almost anytime and almost anywhere (particularly good for public transit). Sometimes LP participates by finishing the sentences and other times by my asking her questions (who did the frog see?). (Many of our stories feature frogs or crocodiles. Those are the hot topics in our house these days.)

Sometimes it even evolves into telling a story one word at a time. These are particularly short stories but she seems to enjoy them a lot. I wonder if it feels like being equals? (More on word-at-a-time story in another post).

I do still get caught up in judging our stories sometimes. They are often simple. I have to remind myself that if LP is engaged, it is happening just as it should. AND I am able to stay engaged by keeping alert to opportunities to see what else we can do with the story spine.

Also, stories for kids often are simple.

And repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Again? Really? We just read that book 5 times...how about this one? Nope. Read and repeat. Storytell and repeat...AND I find it easier to introduce something new...some bit of color or filling out a moment or acting out an animal noise. Anything helps sometimes.

One new thing that has emerged very recently...LP likes to start off our collaborative stories the same way and then changes one element that then effects the outcome. For example, a story a few days ago was about a pterodactyl and pterodon who need a dog to help them out (the pterodactyl gets stuck in a tree after it was flying along very fast) was changed significantly when LP, after a lot of thought, made it a crocodile who comes along to help out. Very different kinds of solutions become possible with a crocodile!o