Learn2soar Music: BLOG - Helping Children Soar To New Heights Of Musical Excellence

Organising a Children’s Musical: 14 steps to staging the perfect show

If you’ve never had any experience in organising a children’s musical before, it can be very daunting. Especially if you find yourself thrust into the role without any previous stage or musical experience. To help you out, here is a check list that we’ve compiled from many years’ experience of organising children’s musicals, nativity plays and class assemblies:

organising a children's musical
Organising A Children’s Musical

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“Outstanding Music Workshops”

What teachers say about our School Music Workshops…

music workshops
School Music Workshops

At this time of year, we usually write a blog about our school music workshops, in preparation for what is traditionally our busiest period of the year for workshop bookings across the UK. But this year for a change, we thought we’d let teachers who’ve used our services over the last 15 years, tell you themselves how much they liked Learn2soar’s Music Workshops:

Fab-u-lous!!!!
“The pop star workshop was amazing. The children learnt so much (as did I) and they were thrilled with the songs that they wrote and recorded. A fabulous day, an exceptional experience, we definitely want him back!”
K Harris, Year 6 teacher (more…)

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A Bumper Harvest: Harvest Assembly Songs and Ideas

It’s Harvest time! As many schools and churches are now in full preparation for their harvest festivals, teachers and children’s church workers everywhere are looking for harvest assembly songs and ideas…

Well, there’s no need to look any further than Learn2soar Music’s range of harvest assembly songs and ideas. We have four great harvest CDs/downloads suitable for ages 3-11. Each contains catchy songs, simple scripts and lots of extra fantastic resources:

H-A-R-V-E-S-T Spells Harvest Assembly Songs Play and performance
H-A-R-V-E-S-T Spells Harvest Assembly Songs Play and performance

H-A-R-V-E-S-T Spells Harvest

This truly is a bumper harvest assembly songs and ideas CD/download.  With seven songs and dozens of pages of stories and ideas. You have everything you need for a harvest spectacular or split up the material so that you have plenty of songs and ideas for the next several years in a row. Either way it’s fantastic value for money.

What teachers say: “We used this CD with our whole school from Y1 to Y6. Each year group performed a different song, while the script was read/performed by the older children. It went very well indeed. Thank you very much.” – J Crompton – Music Teacher (more…)

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‘No Christian assemblies please, Not in our school’

Christian assemblies seem to be dying out. Here is our view on the current state of Christian assemblies in schools, given the current legal requirement for all pupils in England and Wales to take part in a “broadly Christian” act of daily collective worship.
Christian Assemblies Singing
School Christian assemblies appear to be dying out

One of the most common queries we receive about our products is the good old ‘is it religious?’ question. The answer we always give is, ‘yes and no!’ In other words, although most of our school assemblies and children’s musicals contain Christian themes, each script also gives the customer the flexibility to remove religious references altogether, if required. This is because each product contains editable versions of the scripts, with many also containing multiple script variations, including non-religious alternatives. Therefore, even our most Christian assemblies can quickly become non-Christian assemblies if so desired.

However, looking back to when we started in business in the early 2000’s, this issue was a lot more challenging for us. Back then, each one of our assembly CDs and school musicals had just one, un-editable script. Regretably, there was very little flexibility. Therefore after a few years of…

Customer: “Is it Religious?”

Us: “Yes!”

Customer: (Silence as they hang up)

… we were forced to become more flexible, from a financial point of view as much as anything else. (more…)

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10 Leavers’ Assembly Ideas! Fresh ideas for Year 6 Leavers

It’s that time of year again when teachers everywhere are preparing for their school leavers’ assembly…

If you’re starting to make plans but find yourself short of inspiration, don’t panic! On this page you’ll find 10 Leavers’ Assembly Ideas for you to use for free.

1. Alien Invasion Play

Alien Invasion - Leavers' Assembly Ideas

Set the children the challenge of writing a play about an alien spaceship that lands on the school playground. A group of aliens enter the school with no knowledge of humans, feelings, school or our planet. The aliens have many questions which need answering, such as:

  • What is school?
  • What are friends?
  • Why do you have to leave school?
  • How do you feel?

As the children answer the questions, they share their memories of school, along with their feelings about what the future holds. (more…)

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CDs vs Downloads in a Children’s Musical – 7 Reasons Downloads Win!

Not every school is luckyCD v Downloads in a Children's Musical enough to have musicians capable of playing along to an entire children’s musical production. That’s why Learn2soar Music provide professional backing music for each children’s musical we sell, so your cast can sing along karaoke style for a fantastic performance. But what format should you use for the backing music? A CD or a download? Every children’s musical we publish is available in both formats, but we believe downloads are always the best choice and easily win the ‘CDs vs Downloads’ battle. Here are 7 reasons why downloads save time, save money, save hassle and even help save the planet…

1. CDs Get Damaged Easily

Are you old enough to remember when the first CDs came out in the early 80s? Manufacturers boldly stated that scratches and dirt would make no difference to the playing quality! Today that claim is almost as laughable as early cigarette advertising which promised ‘amazing health benefits’!  How times change…

We’ve all shared the frustration of finding that our favourite disk is suddenly jumping through the best song and when we examine the disk surface, it’s usually the smallest of scuff marks that’s the problem. Let’s face it, a jumping CD is annoying. However, a jumping CD in the middle of a children’s musical performance is an absolute nightmare! Over the years we’ve sadly heard several horror stories of that very event occurring! Fortunately, digital downloads played through a computer, MP3 player or iPod don’t get dirty or scratched and always play perfectly well. (more…)

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9 Unique School Music Workshops

9 Unique Music Workshops from Learn2soar Music

Learn2soar School Music Workshops
Learn2soar School Music Workshops

You may have noticed that we offer very popular ‘Music Man‘ and ‘Pop Star‘ music workshops to UK-based Primary Schools and Pre-Schools. However, did you know that we offer several other unique music workshops, projects and services? We’ve recently updated our Music Workshop Pages and added a new Special Projects page, where you will find full details. Here are some of the highlights…

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What A Star Nativity Play: How your children can shine like stars!

‘What A Star’ is a groundbreaking nativity play designed to boost your children’s self-image. This blog looks at how and why it was made.

Early in 2013 I had an idea for a new nativity play for young children. The premise was simple: a little star who wasn’t very good at shining would be chosen by God to become the brightest star of all, shining over Bethlehem, guiding the wise men to visit the newborn baby Jesus.
What A Star - How your children can shine like stars
I suggested the idea to my teenage daughter, who ran with it. Within a few days she had enterprisingly produced the first draft of what would become: ‘What A Star!’ A nativity play for ages 3-7. In her script, my daughter had introduced the idea of the star going to ‘star-school’, but being the worst in the class at everything, getting teased by other ‘bigger, better stars’ and feeling unhappy at being so small and shy. By the end of the play of course, Leo the little star becomes the biggest, brightest, most important star of all, as he shines over Bethlehem’s stable.

All good and well, but what surprised me most was that my daughter had chosen to give this star a name… Leo! Having written dozens of nativity plays over the years, my first instinct was to change the name or remove it altogether. But then I thought about the significance of this tiny name…

Straight away, I should state that I never read horoscopes, or take any interest in star signs or the zodiac, but I do know that because my birthday is in late July, my star sign is ‘Leo’. Therefore, as I read the first draft of the script, I immediately felt a connection to this little star, who didn’t feel as good as all the larger, older stars in his class.

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BRAND NEW: Our First Nativity 2

Due to popular demand, we’ve created a follow-up to our biggest seller: ‘Our First Nativity 2’ is out now…

Our First Nativity One & Two
Our First Nativity & Our First Nativity TWO

Back in August 2010 I had one of my better ideas, to create the simplest nativity play possible for very young children, calling it ‘Our First Nativity’. A few months later it went on sale, and we were astounded by the response. It was soon outselling all our other products combined and has now gone on to become our all-time best-selling product by a long way.

It has since spawned a whole host of related early years products, ‘Our First Harvest’, ‘Our First Easter Play’, ‘Our First Easter Show’, ‘Our First Spring’, ‘Our First Mother’s Day’ and ‘Our First Christmas Play’, all of which have done well in their own right. I had planned to give the ‘Our First’ range a bit of a break, but then last year I had a few very interesting phone conversations…  Over the course of a two-week period, I spoke to several customers who all said the same thing, that they had bought ‘Our First Nativity’ when it had first been released and that they loved it SOOOO much that they had decided to re-use it again and again, every year without fail! Wow! (more…)

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‘Away WITH The Manger’ in the newspapers

This article is from 2014

‘Away WITH The Manger’ is one of our most popular Christmas plays. In this blog, co-writer Stuart Ross writes about the publicity it’s been receiving.

Two years ago, I released a Christmas play titled ‘Away WITH The Manger‘. The play had been lovingly crafted over a long five-year period and had originated from an idea by my 9-year-old daughter. She actually wrote the first few scenes including the first song which goes like this…

Away WITH The Manger Christmas Nativity Play
Away WITH The Manger Christmas Nativity Play

“Away with the manger, two robbers stole it,
They were called Bob and Bill and they were both big twits…”

The hilarious story then tells the tale of two bungling burglars who are on the run with a bag of stolen jewels. Through a strange turn of events, the jewels are hidden in the local school’s nativity manger and soon the comical crooks want them back! As the characters stage their school nativity play, mayhem ensues, but one thing is clear… crime doesn’t pay, as the crooks are eventually locked up. The play then finishes with a glorious nativity scene, with Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Wise Men, etc… reminding the audience of the true reason for the season.

‘Away With The Manger’ was an instant hit and has now been successfully performed in thousands of schools around the world. However, one thing we didn’t realise when publishing it, was that certain British national newspapers had a different agenda… (more…)

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Palm Sunday Is Missing!!!

Palm Sunday is sadly ignored by most modern calenders, but this sad omission may be indicative of modern society’s uncaring side…

On the wall in my office is a wall planner published by ‘Teach Primary’. It contains an extensive list of important dates from many world religions including obvious events like Christmas, Easter, Ramadan and Diwali, as well as more minor dates like All Saints Day and Ash Wednesday. As I was studying the planner recently, I noticed a surprising omission. Palm Sunday was missing! Later, I checked all the other diaries and calendars around our house and found that only one noted that this coming Sunday April 13th would be Palm Sunday.

Palm Sunday Musical: The Donkeys Tale
Palm Sunady Musical: The Donkeys Tale

I believe that Palm Sunday is an important date and shouldn’t be ignored. That’s one of the reasons why I recently published a short Palm Sunday children’s musical: ‘The Donkey’s Tale’, which tells the story of Palm Sunday from the donkey’s point of view. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on a humble donkey, the people shouted ‘Hosanna’, which literally means ‘save us’.

The people of Jerusalem were hoping that Jesus would save them from Roman occupation. Of course, that wasn’t the case, but the reason this story always impacts me is because it reminds me of all the people in our world today who are also shouting ‘save me’…

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