Bringing Pinocchio to life – Westend in Schools
After celebrating a week of reading for World Book Day, every class from Nursery through to Year 6 took part in special sessions to bring famous stories to life through movement and dance.
Some classes chose to focus on the story of The Gingerbread Man or Alice’s adventures down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Meanwhile, up in Year 6, the children brought the story of Pinocchio to life - the wooden puppet with hopes of becoming a real boy. Many of the children were aware of the story of Pinocchio through seeing the Disney adaptation, but this was a great opportunity to introduce them to more detail from the book that inspired the film.
Taking it in turns, each class went into the hall and were greeted by a visitor from the Westend in Schools company. She carefully led the children through key events in the story before splitting them into two groups. The groups then worked together to create a series of freeze frames of moments in Pinocchio’s life from his creation in Geppetto’s workshop, to being on stage receiving applause from the crowds. They were taught the importance of making their actions exaggerated and large, so that it would be seen if viewed on a stage. The children then joined back together to perform one of Pinocchio’s biggest adventures – an encounter with a mighty whale!
This was all completed with just background music and no words, so the children really needed to concentrate to learn the moves in a short space of time. They particularly enjoyed acting out Pinocchio’s famous growing nose when a lie was told! In the final five minutes, the classes put the whole dance together in one fluid performance. They did brilliantly.
