Hello!

Can you believe it is already JULY? We can’t either. We started some great projects last month and are continuing the fun into this month as well. Most recently, we teamed up with the Autism Society of Minnesota to hold our second annual Camp Art for All. To find out more about summer events and classes held by AuSM, check out their website here! Read on to learn more about all the fun things we did at camp last week and how we went about developing an original production!

But first, we want to send a huge thank you to all of the families who were able to be a part of our performance, all of our fabulous teaching artists, all of our hard-working campers, as well as the Autism Society of Minnesota. You all played an integral part in the success of this camp!

Here is a little recap of each of the four main groups we had throughout each day:

Theatre/Visual Art: We were so lucky to have Miss Lizz Windnagel, an active member of the local arts community, lead us through both art and theatre projects during our two weeks at camp. She worked extremely hard to develop a theatre production from scratch with the input and interests of each of our campers! During the first week, we focused mainly on what each specific child found fun and exciting. Many of our discussions revolved around TV shows, movies, and comic books. From these ideas, we gathered that most of them were specifically fond of a certain character or person that they could relate to or looked up to. From there, we realized that a superhero theme might fit this group just right! After developing the overarching theme, we tried to narrow down all of the characters…some of which were original, some of which were based upon cartoon characters. Here are the names of our cast: Rita Repulsa/Evil Queen, FunTime Freddy, the Flood, Elsa, Captain Underpants, Bunny Dragon, Polka Dot Girl, Shooting Star Girl, Professor Snape, Peace, Green Hero, and Mustache Man. After each camper chose a character, we decided whether they would be super heroes or super villains. We then did some small group work to create some dialogue between characters. Keep in mind, many of the ideas for the script came from our kiddos! Once we had that set, the second week was mainly for creating props, costumes, and scenic design.

Music: Alexa Rosenbaum, one of our current music therapists at Toneworks, led our groups through music every day and helped our campers develop original music specific to our production.For the first song, we decided to do a piggy back on Eye of the Tiger. We picked this one because it is catchy, upbeat, and talks about standing up to challenges and rivals. Miss Alexa asked the kids for help rewriting the words to this song by inviting each of them to think of the superpowers that their characters had. Everyone was more than excited to share about how their superhero fights crime!

Here are the lyrics, which tell you a little bit about each superhero: (to the tune of Eye of the Tiger)

Verse 1:

Rita Repulsa is an evil queen,
Fun Time Freddy has a puppet named Bon Bon,
Captain Underpants flies in the air,
Elsa has ice powers,
Green Hero has super strength,
Shooting Star shoots stars everywhere,
Bunny Dragon hops around spitting hot fire,
Peace has 3 different modes

CHORUS:
We are superheroes and we have super powers
And we all fight our enemies
We all change the world and we’re all super cool
And we welcome you all to our show of supers

Verse 2:

Polka Dot shoots dots at people,
Mustache Man has a mustacharang,
Professor Snape has a magical wand,
Flood infects everyone.

In addition to using this song as an introduction to our play, we decided to add another song towards the end. We chose the song Count on Me as a final hoorah to symbolize friendship and family.

Here are the lyrics: (to the tune of Count on Me by Bruno Mars)

Verse 1:

If an evil Bunny Dragon attacks your ice castle,
I’ll help you rebuild it
If Rita Repulsa steals all your crystals
I’ll fly or run to find them 
I’ll help you find Bon Bon
Throw a mustacharang and polka dots til you’re nice
CHORUS:
You can count on me like 1-2-3  
I’ll be there 
And I know when I need it 
I can count on you like 4-3-2
You’ll be there
Cuz that’s what friends are supposed to do, yeah, yeah 
Tra la la la la, Tra la la la laaa la yeah, yeah

Movement: Maureen Korthals, another music therapist at Toneworks, helped our groups with movement group after lunch every day. We did lots of stretching to warm up followed by some interpretive movements and group leadership skills. Miss Maureen also developed choreography to two of the songs featured in our production, Ghostbusters and We Are Family. Check out a video clip here!

Adaptive Yoga: Caitlin Gottschalk led an incredible adaptive yoga group each day for our campers to help calm and relax them after a tiring day. The kids absolutely LOVED her and did fantastic with all of the different movements and poses.

And that’s all folks! We are very much looking forward to next year!!

Have a great week!

Lacey Reimnitz  |  Toneworks Music Therapy Intern