As we march inexorably toward the first days of a new school year, many of us are faced with searching out ideas for school assemblies and shows to bolster the curriculum while providing a welcome break from class time for students and teachers alike. Moreover, in these days of rising costs and shrinking budgets, field trips are more and more a rapidly fading memory for many schools. So the search is on for the best possible use of what limited funds remain in order to provide students with the best bang for the buck.

For many years one of our most popular school assemblies has been the elegant and highly acclaimed Young Authors Day. This stunning school show is a magnificent way to get kids excited about writing, and never fails to deliver absolutely rave reviews from whatever school is lucky enough to schedule it.

OK, time for a little blowing of our own horn. Year after year, all over the country schools offer up acclaim for our awesome portable planetarium, The Sky Dome. Four separate tours carrying this brilliant inflatable planetarium travel all over the country every year.

Mobile Ed Productions sends wonderful school assembly performers from Michigan (and a few other states) out on the road every year in August to begin touring to schools pretty much all over the country. It is a rambling, crazy way of life alternating between the exhilaration of performing great school shows in front of happy kids and teachers and the loneliness of empty hotel rooms and long miles on the road. Thanksgiving and other family oriented holidays, usually give us an opportunity to get home for a few well earned days with loved ones.

California is a huge state, with many schools. As a result, though various tours of ours visit there each year, Mobile Ed has several performers who are full time residents on the West Coast, servicing schools there year round.

Sky Dome Planetarium is one of the most popular school assemblies in the country. And why wouldn’t it be? For kids there is hardly a more awesome experience than to enter their gym and discover a huge silver dome occupying half the room and standing some sixteen feet high. And then to enter the dome itself through a mysterious tunnel, sit in the dark inside and then to be treated to a wondrous journey into outer space and beyond! We have never met a child (or adult!) that did not think this a totally awesome experience.
With curriculum based instruction embedded thoroughly throughout the program this great school assembly is also a huge hit with teachers, as it reinforces educational benchmarks in several areas.
And so we are happy to alert you that we have made more than one tour available this year in the midwest. Michigan and Ohio schools, being right in our backyard so to speak, ave always had great opportunities for scheduling this show, but with extra performers now available, Skydome will be able to visit several states that have not had great access to this portable planetarium school assembly before.
Sky Dome (sometimes confused with the older Star Lab program) is available this school year to midwestern schools in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minneapolis and even Texas, Utah, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota!
For those in other parts of the country, do not despair, as we have additional performers resident on the East and West coasts and available to service schools both in California and the eastern states of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and all of New England.
So let the stars shine over your school!

California School Assemblies Teach Kids That Writing is a Blast!

One of the most difficult tasks a teacher has is teaching kids to write. Children are usually put off by this task and don’t realize how much fun it can be to engage in creative writing.

Many schools, seeking to excite students and prod them into writing turn to famous or not so famous authors of children's literature and arrange a visit from such an author. And, indeed, sometimes this can help. But often the writer of great books is not a great or engaging speaker. Moreover, since writing itself is their principal love, many only visit schools reluctantly and therefore charge exorbitant rates or impose outlandish conditions upon the school. Not quite as bad as rock stars insisting that green M&M’s be removed from the dish backstage, but oftentimes times almost as bad!

Thankfully, a real and delightful alternative exists. Frequent readers will have heard me speak before about Young Authors Day, our creative writing program performed by a classical mime.
This thoroughly entertaining and important program was created by Toma The Mime, a student of famous French classical mime Marcelle Marceau. Toma has drawn rave reviews in this program for almost twenty years and is still getting kids excited about writing all over the midwest, Texas and the East Coast.

But what is a West Coast school to do?
Well, Mobile Ed has you covered! Young Authors Day is such a popular and “in-demand” school assembly that we have had Toma train other performers to carry the program into areas time will not permit him to visit.
In California we are exceptionally fortunate and blessed to have the talents of Karen Lorshbough available to visit our schools and she is magnificent! A skilled and highly trained classical mime in her own right, Karen came to us some years ago and she and Toma hit it off immediately. I have to say it was amusing having them both here in the office simultaneously during training! We never knew what was going to be waiting around any corner in the office!

Karen now lives in Southern California, but travels all over the west for Mobile Ed bringing her performing skills to play and instilling in children a wonderful love of creative writing.

The day starts with a 45 minute program in which Karen demonstrates to the delight of her audience how a story may be told through mime. In the process, the children are not only highly entertained, but also learn how a mime may play multiple characters in the same story. During the program she occasionally breaks character as the mime and becomes “the author”, explaining how she comes up with ideas for stories, how she puts them down on paper, the differences between writing for a reader versus writing for a performer and so on. The children are mesmerized. Toward the end of the assembly she sends the children back to their rooms armed with a simple plot-based rubric for writing stories, and challenged to write their own. During the balance of the morning Karen visits classrooms while the children are writing and offers support, suggestions and other assistance. In the afternoon, students are treated to a reprise performance when in a large group assembly, Karen proceeds to perform stories written by the students that  morning. The excitement and joy is palpable and the day leaves an indelible mark on the kids teaching them that writing is a blast! This energy remains in the classrooms for weeks following a visit.

Some schools capitalize on a visit by also scheduling an evening show so that parents can view the stories written by their sons and daughters. These events are always well attended, as what parent can resist their child begging them to return to the school at night?
So if you are out on the left coast reading this, and you are contemplating picking out the green M&M’s to satisfy some demanding author, why bother? A visit from the lovely Karen is not only more effective, but also so much more fun!