Are challenging activities good for children? I think they can be, as long as the challenge feels achievable. Children鈥檚 activities should absolutely be enjoyable, but that doesn鈥檛 mean everything has to be easy.
They should enjoy going. They should laugh, make friends and come out wanting to go back the following week.
But I don’t think that means everything they do should be easy.
Sometimes the best moments come from giving children something that makes them think, I’m not sure I can do that.
We had one of those moments when we were preparing Viva La Vida by Coldplay for one of our shows.
We could have made it much easier
My husband Robert is our Musical Director and he arranges a lot of the music we use in our shows.
For Viva La Vida, he’d arranged the song into three parts.
We had the tune, plus two different harmony parts.
Now, singing a harmony is hard enough when you’re learning it on its own.
But eventually we needed to put all three groups together.
That meant some of the children had to stand next to people singing something completely different and somehow NOT start singing their part instead!
That’s really hard.
Especially for some of our younger children.
We could have made it much easier and had everybody sing the tune.
But we didn’t.
What happens when something is difficult?
We didn’t just expect them to be able to do it straight away either.
We practised.
At one point, each group had to sing their own part while I played a recording of one of the other parts.
Their job was to keep going and not get pulled onto what they could hear.
It was tough.
But hearing the other part also started to help them understand where their bit fitted.
Oh, mine comes in there.
I’m higher than them at this bit.
We’re singing together here.
It started to make sense.
Then we put the groups together with the backing track.
And it worked.
I remember listening to them and it brought a tear to my eye.
Not just because the harmonies sounded beautiful, although they did.
It was the look on their faces afterwards.
They knew they’d done it.
Shouldn't hobbies just be enjoyable?
I can completely understand why a parent might think that an activity their child does in their spare time should just be fun.
They’ve been at school all week. They don’t need another three hours of sitting at a desk being told what to do.
Thankfully, Theatretrain isn’t very good at sitting at desks 馃槀
But I also think children can enjoy being challenged.
There’s a lovely feeling that comes from finally being able to do something you couldn’t do when you started.
That doesn’t mean making everything ridiculously difficult.
If I gave a group something so far beyond them that they had no chance of doing it, they’d probably just feel frustrated.
That’s not what I want either.
It’s about finding something that’s going to make them work a little bit.
How do you know when a child needs help?
You can normally see it.
There’s a difference between a child who’s getting something wrong but is giving it a really good go, and a child who’s completely lost.
Their body language usually tells you quite a lot.
If they’re on the right track, they might just need a bit more time.
Someone else might need me to go over their part again, stand near them, sing with them or break it down into something smaller.
And sometimes the whole group needs us to stop and try something a different way.
That’s teaching.
For me, the aim isn’t to remove anything they find difficult.
It’s to help them get to the point where they can do it.
What if they get it wrong?
They will.
We all do.
If we’re learning something new, I’d be amazed if everybody got it right first time.
And I don’t want the children worrying so much about making a mistake that they’re frightened to have a go.
Sometimes they’ll sing the wrong note.
Sometimes they’ll forget what comes next.
Sometimes a dance will go completely wrong.
That’s fine.
We work out what happened and have another go.
Usually with quite a lot of laughter along the way.
Fun and challenging aren't opposites
I think that’s the important bit.
Something doesn’t have to be easy for a child to enjoy it.
In fact, sometimes the difficult bits are the ones they’re most proud of afterwards.
With Viva La Vida, we could have taken away the harmony parts.
Everyone could have sung the tune and it would still have sounded lovely.
But I’ll always remember that first time we put those three parts together.
And judging by the smiles on the children’s faces, I think they knew they’d achieved something too.
We could have made it much easier.
But that moment wouldn’t have felt quite the same.
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