Mike Moxcey ©2001
Age Appropriate Handouts and Posters
When playing shows at schools, having posters and/or handouts enhances
the experience and makes you appear more professional. But they should
be appropriate for the age group (if the audience is grouped into an age).
For all school assemblies, I just have posters with both words and pictures.
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Second grade and older kids can read fairly well and handle handouts.
If you give papers with words to younger kids,
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it will take a long time to hand them out and
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they will keep crinkling them the entire time.
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First graders are learning to read. I play throughout the year for
the local first graders and my posters get wordier and wordier each time
(and of course the first time I'm just totally amazed they can read "Yee
Haw" and ask the teacher if she's sure I'm not in a second grade class).
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Preschoolers can't read but can quickly memorize words and associate them
with a picture. Yet I usually add words to the poster because they'll
often have several adults around who will sing with you if given the words.
Posters
Make bright colored posters with large letters that are easy to read from
the back. Do them on large sheets of paper like conference facilitators
use. It's cheaper to make mistakes and after finding which ones are
really useful, laminate them. A school that you're volunteering at
will often do this for you.
Handouts
I like to give younger kids handouts to remember me by. It also helps
when they get home and are trying to explain to their parents what instruments
or songs "that music guy" played. I make an easily copied sheet that
has good pictures of instruments to color. I also label each instrument
and often put the number of strings on it (they can all read numbers) and
little drawings of fingerpicks or a capo or whatever. On the back,
I may write a paragraph or two about what concepts I covered and will even
put the words to songs in case parents want to sing with their kids.
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