Family Update: Drama, Speech and Debate

It’s pretty obvious by how we spend our time and money that we feel that being a good public speaker is important in our family.  Our kids have just spent 3 jam-packed weeks doing drama, as well as a speech and debate tournament.  Enjoy the pictures!

“Hairspray” presented by Spotlight Youth Theater.  We had 2 kids involved in this musical, which played for 9 performances.  My oldest son B and oldest daughter M performed in it. My 2nd son J worked backstage, and I worked in costumes.

Here is a promo video about it.  B is at the very beginning and M at the very end.

My son played Harriman Spritzer, the owner of the Hairspray company, as well as a policeman.  My daughter was in the “cutest kids” chorus.

   

At the strike party, the directors give out awards, and B received the “Outstanding Actor” award!

Along with doing musicals, six of our kids are in Spotlight’s drama, dance, and singing classes. I had the wonderful privilege to suddenly take over the auditioned singing class, which is focusing on a cappella music for two sessions. There are 4 boys and 7 girls in the class, and they are so talented.  They performed 2 songs by Pentatonix and an arrangement of “You Are My Sunshine” that they made up themselves.

Here is my 6 yo daughter’s class.  One of the moms made these cute skirts.

My oldest son is one of two boys in the advanced dance class called Project Dance.  It has really stretched his dancing abilities!

   

J was in a class where they learned how to act for film.  The movie premiered at our showcase, and the kids dressed up for the occasion.  (I think I’ll have a link to the movie online sometime soon, so I’ll share that!)

 

My older boys did public policy debate for the first time ever this past weekend.  They have been working on the resolution for a month.  It was a great learning experience for them!  I can see them only improving in it in the coming years.  The resolution they debated was: “Resolved, that travel restrictions have little impact on the spread of serious communicable diseases.”

 

My oldest daughter is now in the advanced level of ICC (Institute for Cultural Communicators), our speech organization.  Here she is doing her first speech, “Hello, My Name is. . .”  She was able to do this speech at our Tournament this past weekend, along with limited prep (receiving a topic and having a minute to think about it before presenting it), and a literary interpretation of the poem “The Minstrels” by William Wordsworth.

Along with debate, my sons participated in the speech part of the tournament as well.  B did a speech called “The History of Musical Theater” which he wrote, a duo interpretation of Tadd and Todd by Dr. Seuss with a friend of his, and radio broadcasting (an impromptu competition).  J did a speech called “My Favorite Bible Verse: John 3:16” which he wrote, a literary interpretation of the book The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow, and radio broadcasting.  B qualified for the national tournament in his Duo and Radio Broadcasting, so we’ll be heading out to Virginia in June!