Movie Draft #2

Below, you will find the second draft of our Pre-k movie. You’ll notice that the children decided to keep the same basic story line from the first draft and just make little changes along the way. Most children picked a new character and then had to decide how their new character fit into the existing story plot.

As always, please excuse any run on sentences, grammatical errors, or lack of dialogue as the students continue to polish their script.

 

Enjoy!

Draft 2

N.M. – a fairy (Tinkerbell)

V.H. – Anna

Z.W. – Woody

R.M. – a doggie

A.H. – a kitty

Z.B. – a cat

P.M. – Buzz Lightyear

L.W. – Mickey Wizard

L.L. – Elsa

J.K. – Pokemon

Once upon a time Mickey Wizard found a cage and he looked in and he said, “Wow there’s a little dog. Hey you wanna play?” and they played together and he said, “I’m going to throw this football like a quarterback.” Woody plays football too and then he paints with his brother and then he calls the Buzz Lightyear to come over to have a big party and they all play with their family. Then they have a sleepover.

They heard Buzz Lightyear crying. He’s crying because his laser got stepped on. Now he has to go and get it fixed at the fixing store.  So Buzz goes to the store to fix his laser.

Just then, they see a princess named Anna. Mickey Wizard says, “Anna would you like to stay over”. Woody says, “ok, we have 60 beds for you sleep in”. And then cat comes and they invite her to stay. They tell her that there are 60 beds for her to stay in. Just then, Buzz lightyear comes back from the store he’s feeling happy because his laser is fixed.

“Hello Buzz,” they say. They tell him that there are 60 beds and he can stay in Woody and Mickey Wizard’s room.

The cat sees Elsa who is walking next to her kitty and everyone invites them to stay for the sleepover. Everyone gets tired and they all go to sleep.

The next day everyone wakes up and they decided to go outside and play. When they get outside they find a fairy. Buzz lightyear says, “I think I know this fairy”. The fairy says, “Hi, my name is Tinkerbell. I don’t think we’ve met before.”

He says, “Hi. My name is Buzz lightyear” and they shake hands. The pokemon enters. He jumps over the cat. The cat doesn’t like it. The cat says, “meow, meow, meow” in an angry voice. Just then, everyone realizes that the animals have gone missing. They all say “Oh no, where are our pets??” They all start look everywhere. They look behind trees and rocks but they can’t find them.

The pets get taken by a monster. The fairy finds the animals by flying around. She finds them in a cage and she uses a magic key to free them from the cage. Everyone brings back the animals to the house but the animals are really tired and so they sleep. But the monster comes back to get them! The monster wants to turn the animals bad so he can destroy everyone. The animals run away from the monster. The monster looks for the animals and finds them but they escape from through the window and run back home.

They find out the monster is just hungry and so the friends give him lots of food from the refrigerator and monster feels good! Everyone invites the monster to stay for the whole day and everyone says, “YAY!”

Pre-K Play: First Draft 2015

Many of you already know that our students have been hard at work writing the script for our Pre-K movie since the beginning of January. Now that we have finished our final draft, we thought it might be fun to look back at the development of our story. Below, you will find the first draft of our play. This copy of the script is written word-for-word as described to us by the students, so please ignore any run on sentences or the lack of actual dialogue. However, if you look closely, you’ll see their ability to include many important story elements such as a beginning/middle/end, as well as a problem and solution!

You’ll also notice that several students choose a character but then do very little in the actual play. Typically, we start each script writing session by acting out the story line that was previously written on another day. This helps the students to see how big or small their roles are and then gives them an opportunity to change it (if they so choose).

The students were allowed to make as many changes as they wanted to their characters or the story line until the beginning of March. Since then, we have begun practicing our lines and designing our costumes and sets.  On May 8th, we have invited our videographer friend, Weird Eric (of WT Summer Camp and Applefest fame), to help film and turn this fantastic story into a movie! We are very excited to dive into the movie making process!

But first, please enjoy this little window into an exploration in script writing!

 

 

First Draft

N.M. – a  flower

V.H. – Anna

Z.W. – Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

R.M. – a rainbow flower without a stem

A.H. – a baby unicorn

Z.B. – Elsa

P.M. – Mickey Wizard

L.W. – Woody the cowboy

L.L. – Snow White

J.K. – a forest guy

 

Once upon a time, Woody found a cage and he looked in and he said, “Wow there’s a little dog. Hey, you wanna play?” and they played together and he said, “I’m going to throw this football like a quarterback.”

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse plays football too and then he paints with his brother and then he calls the mickey wizard to come over to have a big party and they all play with their family. Then they have a sleepover. They heard Mickey Wizard crying. He’s crying because he lost his magic wand. Now he has to get a new one. So Mickey Wizard goes to the store to buy a new a wand.

Just then, they see a princess named Anna. Woody says, “Anna would you like to stay over”. And Mickey Mouse Clubhouse says “ok, we have 400 beds for you sleep in” and then Elsa comes and they invite her to stay. They tell her that there are 400 beds and that she can sleep with her sister and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse will stay with his brother. Just then, Mickey Wizard comes back from the store with a wand and he feels happy.

“Hello, Mickey Wizard,” they say. They tell him that there are 400 beds and he can stay with Woody in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’s bed.

Elsa sees Snow white who is riding in on a baby unicorn and everyone invites them to stay for the sleepover. Everyone gets tired and they all go to sleep.

The next day everyone wakes up and they decided to go outside and play. When they get outside, they find two beautiful flowers and they pick the flowers. The forest guy says, you have to put those flowers into the water. So they take the flowers inside and put them in some water.

Then the baby unicorn gets lost! So everyone goes to look for the unicorn, except for Anna who stays home to take care of the flowers. They looked around and they realized that the monster had taken her into the cave. The forest guy hears a sound and he thinks it’s the baby unicorn and it was the unicorn. But Snow White says, “this will take forever to find the unicorn!”

Mickey wizard breaks the cave with magic from his wand and he uses his magic wand to bring the unicorn to him and to safety. The baby unicorn made it back to the house safely. Everyone says, “YAY!!!”

The End.

Pre-K Play: Final Draft

The final draft of our play was based on the storybook Snowmen at Night, which the children had read earlier this year. However, in order to put our own spin on this tale, we decided to tell a story that would show what toys do at night while we sleep. The students created a story with a beginning, middle, and end while also creating a problem that needed to be solved.

Some children worked on writing the dialogue for their characters, while others help write the plot of the story. Some students decided that they felt more comfortable just acting in the play and not having lines. Each child was thoughtful about what they wanted their characters to look like and how they would act in each scene.

It was a long journey from our first script-writing session, but they crafted a wonderfully creative story and we could not be more excited to share it with everyone at our up-coming movie premiere!

Enjoy!

 

What Do Toys Do at Night?

 

The Toys

A.H. – a fairy

A.R. – a ballerina

A.J. – a green robot

D.K. – Princess Aurora

E.S. – Sven

H.P. – Spiderman

J.W. – Ben Kenobi

J.J. – Iron Man

O.M. – a football player

O.A. – a bear

S.M. – a vampire squid

S.B. – a fairy mermaid

T.O. – a blue robot

 

The little girl

S.C. – Elsa

 

A little girl, named Elsa, is playing in her room. The toys are all silent and not moving. Elsa stretches. She says, “I’ll put these toys away in the morning.”
Elsa goes to sleep. Then the toys start to wake and decide to play hide seek.

The bear is counting while everyone else hides. Then Sven, Aurora, the fairy, the robot, and Spiderman go to hide in the toy box, but they get stuck inside.

The bear starts to look for his friends. He finds, the vampire squid, the football player, the dancer, fairy mermaid, Ben Kenobi and the blue robot.
The bear notices there are a lot of friends that are missing.
“There are not as many friends as I used to see.”
Some of the toys say, “Oh, no! I’m worried for my friends”
Ben Kenobi uses his binoculars to look around.
The bear says, “Wait a minute, I see foot prints. There are two kinds of foot prints. One leads up to the roof, and one leads to the wall.”
The dancer stands on her tippy-toes to look on the shelf and says, “All I see is a box”.

Elsa wakes up and the toys freeze. Elsa goes to get a drink of water and goes back to bed.

Meanwhile in the toy box, Sven tries to use his antlers to open the box but it does open. Aurora says, “I have an idea, let’s all work together to open the lid.”
Then all the toys work together to push the lid open but it doesn’t budge.
“It’s too heavy” says Iron Man.
Spiderman says “It’s locked”.
The fairy says, “It’s stuck”.
Iron Man tries to laser a circle to try to get out of the toy box. Spiderman tries to use his webs to open the box. The fairy tries to fly out, but the lid is too heavy.
The robot says “I’ll make a key”.
The robot tries to use the key from the inside but it doesn’t work. The lid doesn’t budge.
“Sven says the keys is too little.” says Spiderman

The fairy mermaid uses her wand to make a map of the bedroom. The toys looks all around the room and then mark off on the map, the places they have looked.

“The first set of footprint don’t lead anywhere, they just walk around in a circle.” says Ben.
“The second set of footprints that lead to the roof, disappear.” says the football player.
The football player puts on his secret spy helmet with x-ray vision that helps him to see into things. He looks around the room.
“I found them.”
All the toys say, “Where?” and the football player says
“They are up on the shelf in the toy box.”
The vampire squid says, “I see the key under the bed.”
He tries to go under the bed to get the key but he gets stuck in gum.
“Oh no, I got stuck in gum”.
So the toys send the ballerina, Ben, and the fairy mermaid on a rescue mission to save the vampire squid. They work together and pull on the vampire squid really hard and he breaks free from the gum.
Now that they have the key, Ben goes to the fire engine to borrow the ladder.
“Come one guys, let’s use the ladder to get up on the shelf.”

Once they all get up on the shelf, they use the key to open the box.
The box opens, “Thank you! Yay!” say the toys
All the toys cheer!
Just then, the toys realize that it’s almost morning and Elsa is waking up. The toys all jump down from the shelf and return to their regular positions on the floor.
Elsa wakes up and says, “Wow, what a dream!”

 

 

Pre-k Play: Draft #3

After several discussions about the components of a good story,  the students decided they wanted to try writing a new script. You’ll notice in this draft that the plot is more recognizable and the students have attempted to create a problem that must be solved. While doing so, however, they completely forgot about adding dialogue. You’ll also notice that only about 3/4 of our class participated in this writing session. Some students were absent while others chose to just watch.

It is clear that the students are beginning to understand how to craft a story that will entertain the masses! Enjoy!
Story #1
H.P. – Red Power Ranger
J.J. – Iron Man
O.M. – a Silver Power Ranger
E.S. – Ice Man
The president has been captured by a bunch of ogres. The power rangers use their phones to get into their suits.
Ice Man makes a stair way up to the castle, and Silver power ranger walks up the stair case. Iron Man flies up to the castle where the president is. The door is locked. Ogres can go through the walls so they don’t need to use doors.
The red power ranger runs to the castle and jumps to the roof and breaks it. The silver power ranger knocks down the walls.
All make it inside but are surrounded by ogres. Ice man freezes the ogres. They have to find the key to open the door where the president is being held captive. They found the key hanging on the wall. They get the president and the silver power ranger uses his jet pack to fly. The cubes melts and the ogres start come after them. The ogres get too dizzy and fall down because they were watching the silver power ranger fly through the sky with the president.
They all escaped and the president was unharmed!
The End.
Story #2
The president and a princess are in jail together because someone tricked him so they could be president.
A.R. – a baby
A.H. – the Princess
S.M. – a pet cheetah
O.A. – A knight
T.O. – a blue Samari power ranger
The baby is sad because her sister is in jail. The blue ranger was flying in the air past the jail and he sees the president and the princess inside. The pet cheetah was with blue ranger and he could smell the president was in jail. The knight was walking past the jail and found a hole which he looked into and saw the president.
The princess is trying to reach the key but she cant get it. The baby follows the princess everywhere so when she taken, the baby followed too but no one locked her up. The baby saw a hammer for the princess to use but since she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t tell her what she found.
The blue ranger tries to fly up to get the key but the megazord was too big so you couldn’t get it. The cheetah tells the blue ranger to help them.
The knight slices into the jail but the witch that tricked the president was chasing the knight. The knight puts a heavy hammer on the witch’s toe and then she can’t move, which leaves the knight to try and open the jail door. The witch was stronger than anyone so the witch kicked the hammer off  the blue ranger used his bow and arrow that has water and fire at the same time and puts it on the witch.
The baby sees the hammer and uses the hammer to knock on the jail bars but the princess still can’t hear her.
The princess tries to climb the wall to get out but it was too high so she had to hang there. The cheetah find keys because he was so fast he ran up the wall and finds the key and saves the princess. The princess jumps up and downs and the baby hugs her.
The knight bakes a cake at their house for the princess to celebrate that she is home. And everyone was really happy.
The End.

Pre-k Play: Draft #2

In this installment of the Pre-k play, you’ll notice that the story has changed completely from the one they had previously created and many of the students have picked new characters. You’ll also notice that some students have picked a character, but never decided how they would fit into the story line. This is very common in the beginning of the story writing process as they begin to navigate voicing their thoughts and ideas.
A.H. – Belle
A.R. – Fairy princess
A.J. – a stink bug
D.K. – Ariel
E.S. – Ice Man
H.P. – Red Power Ranger
J.W. – A leopard
J.J, – Iron Man
O.M. – a Silver Power Ranger
O.A. – a giant bear
S.M. – a baby cheetah
S.B. – little red riding hood
S.C. – a cat
T.O. – a daddy cheetah

Story #1

Once upon a time there were two cheetahs and they were sleeping. A black bear is cooking dinner while the leopard played. The cheetahs woke up because it was too loud. The baby cheetah growled and the daddy cheetah said, “Can you please be quiet?”.
The bear said “Don’t worry” and then gave them their favorite food.
Everybody ate and the baby cheetah said, “It’s pumpkin pie”.
Then they want more food but the bear doesn’t have any more. So the bear has to go the store to get more. They all put their dishes away and they go to the store.
The End.

Story #2

First, Princess Belle doesn’t know what dress to wear to the ball. Little red riding hood said, “I know what dress you can wear. You can wear this dress that is yellow.” But Belle wanted the purple one with dots.
Then little red riding hood got mad.
“I’m angry” said little red riding hood.
The fairy princess is flying around the house.
Princess Aurora and the fairy princess chase the cat.
Little red riding hood was happy again.
Everyone gets ready for the ball while the cat slept. And then a stink big came and the princesses ran away.
The cat wakes up when the bug comes in.
The cat roars at the stink bug and the stink bug ran away. And the cat went home.
The End.

What’s in a name?

Our play officially has a name! After some brainstorming, and careful consideration, the students unanimously voted for…”What do toys do at night?”. Now that we have settled on a name, it’s time to get working on our costumes and set. The fun is just beginning!

 

P1120811

The Pre-K Play: a first draft (2014)

We are excited to announce that our students have officially written the script for our upcoming pre-k play! We started writing our play in January, when we returned from winter break, and have been working on it ever since. The story and characters have changed many times as the students’ ideas have evolved. Below you will find the first draft of our play. You’ll notice that in the beginning stages, the students tend to write several separate stories and often leave out important story elements, such as dialogue. This will come later when they begin to better understand the various dynamics of story writing.

Enjoy!

 

Pre-k Play: First Draft

E.S. – Jockey
A.J. – Lion
O.A. – A giant bear a black bear
S.B. – the swan princess
S.M. – a pet black bear
(E.S.) I play music.
The swan princess decorates the Christmas tree. The lion is playing the flute. The black bear watches the swan princess put the decorations on the tree.
Once upon a time, there was a jockey and a lion and they were playing music. While they were playing music the swan princess decorated a tree, while the bear watched. The bear puts the star on the top of the tree. The swan princess leaves to go get a pet. The swan princess comes back with the pet black bear and the bear dances.
All of the sudden, Darth Vader uses the light saber and chopped down the Christmas tree and everyone said, “oh no!”.
“That’s not good we don’t like it. It hurts our chrismas party.” said the swan princess.
The pet bear said, “Darth Vader you should get us a new tree”.
So Darth Vader went and got a new tree and they had their party. It was getting very late and everyone went home.
T.O. – a bad clone trooper
H.P. – Luke Skywalker
J.J. – a bad Clone trooper
At Tatooine. There are two suns. It is very hot
The bad guys don’t like the good guys. They had an epic battle. Luke skywalker uses the force to make the clone troopers move back. The clone troopers fall down. The epic battle ended.
A.R. – a fairy
S.C. – Princess Aurora
D.K. – cat
H.P. – Wizard
T.O. – Black cat
The cat is the fairy’s pet. We’re in Princess Aurora’s house.
The fairy brought the cat to visit Princess Aurora. The cat sat. The fairy pets the cat. A wizard came. He put a spell on Princess Aurora and says, “You’re going to sleep for 100 years”. The wizard stays and waits for his black cat to come.
The fairy tries to wake her up with her wand, but the wizard puts her back to sleep again. This happens again and again.
The cat would hold the wizard by the arms so he can’t do his spells. The fairy uses her wand to wake up Princess Aurora. When she wakes up, the fairy uses her spells to make the Wizard and the black cat fall asleep. The wizard snores loudly and the fairy and princess and cat all run away.
The End.