has anyone any experience of Stagecoach?

[flirtygerty]

I went to look at one & found that out of a class of about a dozen, the majority of the kids weren't doing anything constructive at all - just mucking aorund at the back & being left by the teacher. Seemed like very expensive Saturday morning childcare to me. Just wondering what anyone else has found?

No personal experience, but I did think they weremore structured than that, how long did you spend there? What was the teacher doing?

My DD goes to the local dance school musical theatre class, some of the time at the start is what they call circle time where they all get together bit of a chat then a game then they get down to the singing and stuff.

DS goes to drama classes run by the smae person, again starts with a get together muck about but lots of "serious" drama stuff after that. If you caught them at the start or the end of the class it might have seemed less orgainised.

I thik Stagecoach is over priced but then I pay a fortune of dance and drama classes anyway .

At what point in the term did you go and visit. Towards the end of a year as the presentation is being pieced together then yes, there can be times when some are waiting around.

ALso how much of the class did you get to observe.

The class should always start with (depending on the age) warm up games in drama and physical/vocal warm ups in dance and sining. The on to excercises. In dance this may be cornerwork or working on a new step, in singing it might be working on breathing or some other aspect, in drama there should be some type of excersise, improvisation etc.

Then in dance a routine will be worked on, in singing it will be a song. In drama they may work on an improvisation/scriptwork etc. In a class of up to 15 there should be plenty of time for indivdual attention. If the teacher is working with a small group whilst the rest are watching they should then call the next group up for them to practice their bit.

If they are piecing together a whole show then they will have to wait until their scene comes around. That is something that they have to learn in drama but it doesn't happen straight away.

I sat through the whole class - 4-6 year olds. teh dance part consisted of doing what looked like aerobiccs warmups, then any old dancing to Kylie etc. the drama was acting outmalong to we're going on a bear hunt. The singing (with words given out - to kids who can't read!) was about 3 songs.

Ok so teh kids are very young - I just expected something more disciplined & structured like you describe. the teacher was very nice but didn't deomstrate much control - like I sais expensive babysitting. My DS loves all this stuff but needs something more structured I think. Thanks IoS for the input.

Right, Early Stages then.

What you describe is very much what I would expect fromthis age group with the exception of the majority of children not being involved.

Singing: The words being given out are more for the benefit of parents. We never used to give words out for this age group but parents asked for them, plus some of the older children inthe group (it goes up to 6/7 years) can read quite well.

In dance I would expect a fun warm up and a simple dance with lots of actions to words, just getting them used to keeping in time with the music and starting to learn a few simple steps and turns.

Drama at this age is often very teacher led, actting out a story (Bear Hunt is a popular one as is Elmer) or miming. Basically the children should be having fun but getting used to moving and pretending to be other characters. We use journeys a lot as it is a useful way of getting them to use their imaginations. We've just finished an Under the Sea workshop where the younger ones were all sea creatures moving in various ways with the older ones as pirates creating different characters.

How old is your ds? We find that once children reach about age 6 they are ready for the older group but some parents choose to keep them with the younger ones for longer.