The Nutcracker Suite Mini-Musical Performance

So, I know this information won’t really help you right now in January, HOWEVER, should you desire to have your students perform this mini-musical, you’ll have plenty of info and time to prepare.

I have never been a dentist but I can imagine pulling teeth is a lot like trying to force prepubescent boys to sing in front of each other and, of course, girls.  Each lesson I do with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders is specifically chosen and created to “trick” (wrong word but it’s the one coming to me) these boys into having fun while learning in music.  Of course, there are those boys that think whatever we do in music is that best thing ever but those are a small percentage.

ANYWAY, my after-school club is the group that performed this and they were an absolute joy to work with.  Of course, anything is easy when the students want it enough to work for it and take risks for it.  There were several boys in the show but the majority were girls.  Thankfully, I had enough boys to do all the male parts without having to do some gender-bending.

This musical (click image above to go to site) is absolutely adorable and was quite the hit.  It uses the melodies of Tchaikovsky’s ballet to tell the story of Clara and her nutcracker.  The music is quite simple; mostly unison with a few sections in 2-pt.

In an effort to make the finale, “Waltz of the Flowers,” special, I asked the dance club to perform.  Their sponsor choreographed and taught a simple routine (these are 1st-3rd graders) and the students were quite adorable.  Of course, this happened during our performance for the student body…..

Yikes!  I was way proud of all the dancers and singers though.  They kept going and the dance sponsor and I did counts between the phrases so students wouldn’t get lost.

The stage was pretty easy to plan/decorate.  Of course, it was still time-consuming but Christmas decorations are plentiful.  Please don’t judge our sad (though newly renovated) cafeteria stage.  We are in the process of building an auditorium that will hopefully house future performances.

I got lucky because the cafeteria staff had a Christmas tree already in there to decorate the cafeteria.  I just had to add the one from my classroom to make the stage even(ish).

Costumes are pretty easy with one exception: the Nutcracker.  Luckily, Oriental trading had this little number for fairly cheap.  It is adult-sized and, sadly, my Nutcracker actor was kind of tiny so one of our awesome parents hemmed it for me.

Finally, a shout-out to Edu-Clips and their clip-art which made the paper portion of the program even easier. I had my older students color them (totes stole that idea) which made each program unique.  I left some un-colored in case participants or families wanted to color their own.

I hope you will consider doing this show.  I don’t get any funds for advocating for it but it is so fun and easy.

Thanks for reading!