Review – Wind In The Willows by La Boite Theatre Company

wind-in-the-willows-la-boite-theatre-company

We were invited to attend Wind in The Willows at the La-boite Theatre Company. I took along my two children 5 and 7. Let me start by saying the play was great! Luke Carroll was great!

I recommend the play, but don’t take young kids. From 8+ onwards depending on their maturity would be ok, and they would need to know the story of Wind in the Willows to truly grasp the character changes. (My daughter read the book a few days before in preparation). I feel the play was misrepresented and here is why :

I had seen a few different advertisements around for the show. Obviously the write-ups were taken from the media release. Most had the image shown above of Luke Carroll. He did not wear this costume, he did not have whiskers on, he was not as cute as a mouse (as in the image). He was just a man in dungarees and changed in and out of a coat to transform between characters (hard for my usually concept grasping 5 year old to grasp this time).

Several write-ups (including this one at Creative Drinks and havenmagazine.com) had written that the costumes were magical and the sets meticulous. The costumes were creative and imaginative: at one point a towel on Luke Carroll’s head transforms him into a judge. Yes, very creative but really would kids get it? By the noise of children chattering and fidgeting around us I am guessing no. It clearly states it was aimed for 4-12 year old’s or anyone who enjoys playing in boats. Um there was only a few sections where the boat was used. I can see some boat loving kids rocking up for a “boat” themed play and being hugely disappointed and we mum’s trying to console them afterwards. Oh the pressures of being a mum, do they have any idea what false promises can do to children.

I personally found the acting very fast as it was hard to follow the lines at times and I am worried how children could follow. There were some fun bits where the audience participated including becoming a sock puppet at a party and making the chugging sounds of a train. These were towards the end which was good as the children who were getting restless and bored or distracted were brought back in again even if they had no idea what they were doing it for.

Check out this review by Rachel and this one too by Absolutetheatre which covers more of the actual story line.

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My daughter’s school has project-based finals instead of tests in the spring, and in her geometry class last year the students constructed a scale model of a town complete with three-dimensional buildings.

Of course building a paper town doesn’t have to include a geometry lesson (they also calculated the volume of their buildings) but it is a fun way to get kids to express their creativity by decorating the buildings and talking about the things they would want to include in their own town.

Putting buildings together is a test of fine-motor skills, and if kids are working on a town together they’ll need to negotiate what goes where and why.

Get started with the house printables from Kids Activities Blog. They’ve got a “plain” roof house and a “fancy” roof house to choose from. Just print, color, cut out and assemble.

You might want more than just houses in your little town, though, so I went hunting for some more printable templates you can use to make different kinds of buildings.

Brother has printable skyscrapers, cars, people, trees and lights (shown above) that are meant to be printed in color buy you can do them in black and white so kids can color them in if you want.

Printablee has another colorized set of paper buildings including different kinds of houses and something that maybe looks like a church or school.

If you’re willing and bale to pay for printables to use in your paper town, there are lots of great ones available on Etsy. Ludlow Prints has a collection with a school, grocery store, bakery and other buildings, while Paper Fun By Yumi includes things like a hospital, fire department and police station (essential if you’ve done a community helpers unit!).

Tiger Bee Learning has a printable set with 20 different buildings, including a bank, library, museum and zoo to name a few, as well as a blank template for kids to design their own buildings. Once you have the basics of making a piece of paper into a 3D building down, kids are sure to want to make their own buildings to add to the town.

Older kids can also write about why they picked the buildings they did, and littler kids will have fun building their town over and over again.

[Photo: Brother]

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