Short clown party for 3 little boys

[Darrell]

This Thursday I will be doing a short clown party for my pastor's kids. He has 3 boys ages 2, 4, and 6. We invited them over for dinner and I thought it would be a great opportunity to get in more practice. I'm not sure what would be good for this age group. I only want it to run about 20 minutes max. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
Darrell

[Sassafras]

One thing that always works well with Scruffy and some of our Red Cross clown troupe folks is the magic coloring book. The boys are at the perfect age for that!

A couple of simple magic tricks would be good, followed by either a balloon for each boy or face painting for each boy. Neither takes too long and will flesh out your performance.

Good luck. We have three little boys and they aren't too difficult to please. Hopefully those boys will be the same.

[BIPS]

Sass is right on about the coloring book, fantastic and versitile magic prop you can use in so many different ways, and you can taylor your whole show around it!

Colors are the theme for the one I use at birthday parties, and you can make it as long or as short you need it. I have a change bag that I actually remove the colors from before showing an empty bag to the audience.

[ashes]

I don't know any short clowns... =)

Do what you do best -- tell stories, do some simple magic -- professor's
nightmare is easy, magic coloring book. Needle through balloon - just
work up some good patter "hypnotize" the balloon, then skewer it. Petunia likes to blow bubbles at outside venues.

We did our very first birthday party (we don't DO birthday parties!) but
it was a favor for one of the firemen. I went as Prof. Pootwaddle instead
of as Ashes and painted faces while my wife made balloons.
Gadget took photos -- they got 3 folks for their party for the price of one.
We did an hour and a half - 30 kids or so. (Found out it was 3 birthday
parties combined) We didn't compromise Ashes and Petunia -- they
weren't there. Instead we went as our alternate characters so we weren't
breaking our rules of being pure "entertainment" clowns instead of
being "edutainment" clowns.

Anyway, my point is -- you should be able to do 20 minutes of just
about anything - stories, sing-a-longs, magic, etc. without too much
trouble at all. Work on juggling or just silly stories that you can
tell from memory. There are a LOT of different skills that clowns
can do.

Ashes

[saphireSue]

Do what you feel comfortable with, I use the magic coloring book and if you've got a change bag there so much you can do. One of my fav. for this age is to pop, popcorn, ....have each one put some kernnels in the bag. then get them to rub their hands together to get them warn then have all of them help you rub the bag .. and as you do it pop popcorn start popping out of the bag. Goes over reall good and as popcorn is light you can fill the bag pretty good.

[Darrell]

Thanks for the advice. It went really well with my pastor's kids. I used the magic clown coloring book and I "hypnotized" a balloon. I used several jumbo props and other magic tricks. A little later, we went outside and I made some very large bubbles using a wand that is about a foot in diameter (bought it at WalMart for about 8 bucks). The kids had a great time and their parents seemed to as well.

One of the boys was scared of me at first but by the end, he was the most active. Again, thanks for the help; I really appreciate it!

Darrell

[Sassafras]

Fabulous! I'm so glad it went well!

[ashes]

Congratulations, Darrel!

That sounds like it went over really well!


Ashes