Toy Store Tales

 I promised a number of weeks ago on this blog that I'd talk about the Toy Store drama phenomenon. Now seems like a good time to do so. I usually don't have any images or artifacts to share for this experience because it's so immersive and "in-the-moment". However, because it's report card season, I've collected a few samples and hidden names/faces.

So what is this Toy Store thing? It all began when my own daughter (who is now 23 - and today is her actual 23rd birthday - Happy Birthday Mary!) used to take classes on Saturdays at The Drama Workshop on Yonge & St. Clair when she was quite young. (I looked it up and the drama studio no longer exists.) Toy Store was one of the drama games that they played and I adapted it for use in my own drama lessons at school.

The premise is simple. The children are all toys in a toy store - toys that are actually sentient. The toy store owner has no clue that the toys are alive. When the toy store owner leaves the building for the day, the toys unfreeze and party. When the toy store owner returns, the toy store is in a mess and the toys are strewn all over the place. The owner is quite flummoxed and eventually tries to uncover the mystery. She returns the toys to their shelves (who are all still and unmoving) and when she leaves, it happens again.

There are certain protocols that are set up in advance so we can play this at school

• The toys can move when music plays. (That way, there's a signal for when students can move or freeze.)
• The teacher is "in role" as the toy store owner when she wears a certain hat. (That way, students can tell if the teacher is pretending or really being the teacher and giving instructions.)
• If the teacher/toy store owner taps the student/toy twice on the shoulder, then they are allowed to get up and assist the game by walking over to the chair or table to be put away. (That way, the teacher doesn't have to physically carry every student back to their shelf, even though the students adore it. Lifting 20 students onto desks is time-consuming, heavy, and potentially awkward when educators aren't supposed to touch students.)

The students are absolutely gaga for this game. They love it. They beg to play it. It's also great to see how their self-control grows as they play this game several times. At first, I have to take off my hat several times to remind them that they can't move when they are toys and the toy store owner is around. They have to work very hard to stifle their giggles when the toy store owner enters the space and is so shocked by the sight. It's better than playing freeze dance because there's a built-in purpose for the inaction. I can also test their ability to be still when, while in role as the toy store owner, I dust the shelves or put price tags on the toys for an upcoming sale. Some of the students are quite excellent at remaining motionless. 

Here are a couple of photos of what the "toy store" looks like before the party and after the party. The students love sitting on the tables, which double as shelves, and I've had to remind them that they can't jump on the tables or have too many people sitting on a single table. (The row of chairs doubles as another set of shelves, which is useful when I have to put away toys.)

I want to point out the person who has their face covered by the red oval. See how she is holding a bottle of hand sanitizer? This is where the game of Toy Store really gets fun. It also fits beautifully with expectation B1.3 - plan and shape the direction of a dramatic play or role play, building on their own and others' ideas both in and out of role, with support. The toy store owner is trying hard to understand why the toys are all over the floor. I ask the students after we've played Toy Store a few times for ideas on what the toy store owner can do to solve the mystery. They suggested that she install a security camera. I used the hand sanitizer as a proxy camera and set it up. Naturally, when they are toys, they had to deal with this story wrinkle. While in role as the toys, they dismantle the camera, hiding it or moving it from its original spot. This way, they are considering multiple points of view - the toy store owner and the toys.

Because I'm playing alongside the students, it's hard for me to capture everything I see, hear, and notice. For instance, another suggestion was to have the toy store owner stay overnight in the store. When the toy store owner tried that, she "fell asleep". (I had to have someone else turn on the music so they knew it was "safe" to move.) I have to stay in character, so I can't scribble notes about who is doing what or how still they are when the music stops. To help me out, we did some paper planning using words and pictures. They could choose to recommend next steps for the toy store owner or the toys themselves.

These are just two of the ideas that one of the classes came up with on paper.

I wasn't sure how I was going to assess these thoughts at first. What I ended up doing was piling them into piles of excellent, good, so-so, and poor suggestions. Then I examined what was it about the submissions that made them excellent, good, so-so, or poor. That helped me construct the rubric (which I have included here so people can use if they want to play this).

I don't know if you can read the second example, but it's a fascinating one, and actually fits indirectly with some current events. I have two classes that I teach dance and drama to this year, with about 20 students in each class. Out of the 40 submissions I read, 2 of them had a very startling suggestion - that the toys kill the toy store owner. (In case you can't read what the second example says, it says "The toys kill the toy store owner but the toy store owner call security guards but the toys beat up the security guards".) I was a bit surprised by these trajectories, as there's been nothing violent in the scenario we've played out. We had a conversation out of role about what a person might do if they discovered that toys could move, think and act on their own - believe it or not, very few of the students have ever seen the 1995 Pixar movie Toy Story, so I had to describe how the toys in that film are very selective about who they reveal this secret to, because of the ramifications of such a revelation. (The class and I theorized that adults might do scientific experiments on the toys from curiosity or throw the toys in the garbage from fear if they realized what was possible.) The current event it can relate to is the news that a six-year old student brought a gun to school and shot the teacher. There are a lot of questions swirling around about who is responsible and what inspires such actions. Thing is, when a student considers violence to be an appropriate solution, it bears considering how and why. (By the way, the other Toy Store suggestion along similar lines wrote "The toys can hide behind the door and get a sword. They would stab the toy store owner.") 

To end on a positive note, I have to say I am quite impressed with the creativity of the students in devising ways that the toy store owner can determine what is occurring in the store after hours. I find a lot more participation in Toy Store than I do in other drama activities because there's no spotlight on a single player. It's also something they'll remember for a long time, as students who are much older can recall doing Toy Store if I had them as a drama student. Maybe we'll have to watch the movie Toy Story so they can see how other "toys" deal with the same problem!